BOOKS I READ: Ghostbread by Sonja Livingston (2009). A memoir of growing up poor and adrift in western New York, the bleak stories chilled by the winds coming off Lake Ontario. The daughter of a single mother managing seven children from multiple absent fathers, Livingston recalls the grit necessary to…
Future Fiction
Ludwig recalls his days before his extension, the day of his extension, and, now, his near immortality.
I often think about the day of my extension. It was all so well coordinated, so flawlessly automated, starting with my arrival at the Senescence Salon, where I began the intake process. My required apostilles had been accepted, and the retina scans matched. …
BOOKS I READ: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) (trans. Joan Charles, 1949). Charles Bovary’s second wife, Emma, is impetuous, needy for love, passion, and the finer things. She overwhelms her husband, the country doctor, taking on lovers at a time when a woman’s reputation could be damaged, while piling…
BOOKS I READ: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2000). The Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the Shah from the perspective of a precocious girl. Marji is wise to the inconsistencies and contradictions of the upheaval that becomes the Islamic Revolution, as the religious front takes…
BOOKS I READ: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014). A novel-length poem detailing the erosion of one’s soul as hurtful racist quips drip, one after the other—in today’s parlance, micro-aggressions. Sometimes the reaction is a resigned, but befuddled, “come on, man.” Other times the reaction is anger, as…
BOOKS I READ: Wayward by Dana Spiotta (2021). The city of Syracuse in upstate New York and the 2016 election are the backdrop for this novel about fraying associations, husband-wife, mother-daughter and status-quo versus activism. Sam, approaching the end of middle age, suddenly decides to restart her life by buying…
BOOKS I READ: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018). Written in verse, this novel is Xiomara Batista’s writing log as she runs into the cruelty of high school, the expectations of her devout Christian mother, and the demands of the church. With her twin brother and her best friend…
Dog business on a Saturday morning walkabout
The dog is especially urgent to head out this morning. He sits, staring at me with his ears out wide, as I try to savor my first cup of coffee. I almost let him out the back courtyard to “do his business,” the command he understands when it’s time to…
BOOKS I READ: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (2003). A love story that, like a mushroom, rises out of the fungal mass that is the world after World War Two. Aldred Leith and the much younger Helen Driscoll become entwined during his visit to Kure, Japan. He is a…
My twenty-four hours of Edgar Allan Poe
Zigzagging my way to the subway after running an early morning errand, I walked past a pair of large crows perched on stone plinths flanking the entrance to a residential building on 84th Street near Broadway. …
Mauricio Matiz
I write personal stories and poems that spring from where I live— New York City—often touched by where I was born—Santa Fe de Bogotá. https://medium.com/matiz
