Health + Youth

“Which reminds me: you can’t write about insomnia or nightmares without sending a four a.m. thank you card to Stephen King, can you? His work has meant so much to me, and I think he is the cartographer of those shadow lands between sleeping and waking.”
—Karen Russell

“Tess Gallagher wrote of Raymond Carver, ‘It was Carver’s law not to save up for some longed-for future, but to use up the best in him each day and to trust more would come.’”
—One Story, “Writing Advice,” as told by James Scott

I’m a good kid
old-style, a happy child
and I’m never gonna have to do that again
but if I want to, I can

“Yet, all the time he was setting out these platitudes with such solemnity, Greta felt sure that they weren’t the real content of his thoughts, just as her own skeptical, condescending cleverness, when she argued with him, wasn’t the real content of her thoughts, either. This conversation took place on the surface, while their real lives were hidden underground beneath it, crouching, listening out, mutely attentive. Mitchell’s physical reality was like a third presence at the table: his bitten skin and slanted, suffering cheekbones.”
—Tessa Hadley

Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
     of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
     funeral parlors. 

You have stolen death because you’re bored.
There’s nothing good playing at the movies
     in San Francisco. 

You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
     to find.

—Brautigan, via Signer