I had to get away from my program, which had turned stifling, so I went to the famous church on the edge of campus. The church was known for being very old, and the group with which it was associated known for being very pious.

“I still didn`t understand. I asked my grandmother what sort of star it was, a constellation or a shooting star or something else?” “No. No, shooting star,” she said, thinking for a minute. “Like a star, but different. Like a black star. And they watch it for a long time. Only in certain places: it happens. It’s a bad thing. These children—” she shook her head.”

I interviewed David Leo Rice about his book 'The New House'

The light is itself a healer, or perhaps better said, a teacher. The sun rises every morning in the east and casts its rays and long shadows toward the west for an hour or so. Rapidly the sun rises in the sky until it seems to hang directly above the Institute—that is to say, in the very center of the veldt itself—at which point all shadows diminish to nothing.

One poem in 'Word For/ Word'

"Were he to have the heart surgery nothing would change. The mornings could come and the evenings would come. The children would cry, still."

“One thing I’ve learned,” she’d said one morning, unbidden, “Is that if you talk enough about something you don’t have, it will eventually find you.” I had to wonder if that was why she never talked of stuff.

A Journalist gets an invitation to interview a reclusive sculptor and learns firsthand the meaning of the artist`s perplexing work.

"There’s a place nearby that sells these little bottles. Script unintelligible. It’s all caffeine with a dash of cholesterol and casein. You drink it down in a gulp and the whole world gets wan and jiggly. Things seem slick, but manageable. Whole barriers of the mind are broken down and you feel like you can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I wash three of these a day down my gullet, civet scented, I think."

Two reclusive siblings live in the shadow of the shadow of their family`s wealth, creating art that no one sees. When the family lawyer Gallaher calls to deliver some sorry news the lavish the hermetic and aesthetic environment they have carefully curated goes awry. What is real, what is imagined; what is dreamt and what is created all fall together.

An interview with Author Mark Gluth about his novel `Come Down to Us` as well as an interview with artist Steven Purtill who collaborated with Mark on projects related to the novel.

I saw some eastern demon crawling. Called out, Catch as catch can! and started to run. He was lumpen, tired, smoking a cigarette. Sweatpants and derisive comments. I made it thirty feet before turning. These things don’t pay as well as they used to, he said.

In the general chaos following the fleeing of the livestock the man sank into a violent silence.

The father and the son built the machines from boards they gathered on the Taiga. It took two months to build the first Lying Down Machine. They made black pine pitch in a fire hut and gathered Widow`s Teeth from within the granite crevices.