35

The gym is filling up with people in their finest, fanciest clothes. No, they have not come to work out in their suits and dresses. They’re here for Yom Kippur.

37m read

It doesn’t mean anything, that the reporter called. It’s just a story. Madman accuses violinist of crazy nonsense during (by the way) a brilliant performance

13m read

The young couple stood leaning against the boardwalk’s railing, gazing out over the beach. The sea was calm, its dull green waves sluggish.

9m read Translated from Yiddish by Rachel Mines

She was an older girl and not very pretty, her body middle-aged, a little shapeless, with a squat, short nose that didn’t match her long face.

13m read Translated from Yiddish by Dalia Wolfson

I’ve got this photo of Joey, in costume, from when he was in the class play in fourth grade. I didn’t take it.

30m read

My great-aunt Mara was the one who taught me what nominative determinism was. My grandfather made the joke once, when he heard me asking my grandmother

12m read

My first time in the forest was before the child was born. I was freshly discharged from the army and had come to a picnic with two girlfriends from the service.

28m read Translated from Hebrew by Yaron Regev

Richard Laxer, expectant father, slumps into a chair, weary from another restless night. The morning calm is broken by the squealing of a bus

11m read

My father's sister Rose still remembers the first time she ate pork.

11m read

Viola had hated the apartment, though she would never tell her mother this. She disliked the musty smell, as though too many people had lived here before them.

26m read

At 120 kilometers an hour, one cigarette lasts for slightly more than three kilometers. I am on my second pack. That would amount to a carton and a half if I drive nonstop.

26m read Translated from Russian by Lena Mandel