HAIRSHIRT In mid-winter, the Conservatory is a space whose damp green, whose broken sunlight could be rented by the hour. People enter in parkas, sigh, then impatiently strip off…
Author: Jonathan Ball
IN THE KITCHEN I keep my grocery lists and advice in the same drawer. I was out of sorts looking for keep your chin up in the bakery. Perhaps sourdough?…
THE BRIDGE COMMUNICATES 1913: In the tine of Pisces and Aries, Disraeli was ruminated on as bridge For aeons we’ve been blueprinted off of a sentence of a sort, no…
LIFE HACKS: COURSEWORK sunflower seeds pistachios a burnt tongue still wags when the work lays flat knit when it doesn’t lift a ten-pound weight one-armed remove slipcovers walk the…
My daughter, wise beyond her 15 years, summed up Winnipeg the other day: “Everybody hates it here, but nobody wants to leave.” Her solution was that we should just all…
THE SHADOW MACHINE “the internet is a cemetery where nothing ever dies” and when she does we crowd her parents’ kitchen counters with tulips and casseroles and careful sympathies…
IN RESPONSE TO THE LOVE “SONNET” YOU SENT ME If I could care less for your fucking sonnet, My chest would bloom wide open, and—in spite Of small decisions…
SUNDAY VISITS And the wolves howl in the forest. Really a shrubbery, but the journey is to granny’s house, and she has teeth. Not pointy ones; these gnashers are…
THE FORMER REVEREND He said he was a liar, so deeply in love with himself that his fortunes had increased while he avoided gay sex, drug use, and memories…
YOU MAY HAVE HEARD If your home is near a park, you’ll live longer. If there’s a plant in your hospital room, you’ll need fewer Tylenol 3s. If you…