Peter M. Leschak, Letters from Side Lake

Again and again, the ice sheet groaned. The rumble echoed off the trees, punctuated now and then by a sharp crack. As my ears adjusted I heard other, distant groanings—the expanding ice of nearby lakes. In deep winter the snow muffles the eerie music of the ice, but on this night all the lakes were cold and bare. I was listening to a symphony of freezing lakes, massive sheets of ice releasing the stress of their growth in heaving cracks that wailed slowly in birth. It transfixed me with its simple, awesome power. Nothing that any man could ever do would change the tune of the ice.

Cross posted: field | work

Barry Hannah, "Love Too Long," Airships

My head's burning off and I got a heart about to bust out of my ribs. All I can do is move from chair to chair with my cigarette. I wear shades. I can't read a magazine. Some days I take my binoculars and look out in the air. They laid me off. I can't find work. My wife's got a job and she takes flying lessons. When she comes over the house in her airplane, I'm afraid she'll screw up and crash.

Ashley Gilbertson, "The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce," Virginia Quarterly Review Fall 2008

Based on their surveys and tabulations from the NCHS’s National Death Index and the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System, Katz estimated that between 550 and 650 veterans are committing suicide each month. It is possible that the number of suicide deaths among veterans in 2008 alone will double the combined combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.

Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments

My mother looked curiously at me. "Why were you afraid of him?" she asked. "You could knock him over with one hand."

"Ma, he didn't look like that twelve years ago. Believe me."

She continued to stare after him as he shambled down Broadway, bumping into people left and right.

"You're growing old together," she said to me. "You and what frightens you."