Amy Butcher
"We Walk A Line"
Yesterday, I returned from one such walk and found a vase of daffodils on our table. Where are they from, I wanted to know. It’s the first week of April and we live in an economically depressed area; you don’t spend what little you have on flowers. “Next door,” is what she said. Next door is a mortuary. Every day, I watch the people come in and out, watch the men arrive in their khaki pants, their faces hardened the way grief will harden. The women are always tearing up, makeup like watercolor under their eyes, and I’m always amazed at their blue and their fuchsia, how not once have I seen them wear black, because around here, the people tell me, a funeral is more a celebration of a life than a mourning of a definite passing. Still, it bothers me about the flowers. (Read more)
"Bugs"
I want to say that there’s a choice: that we can navigate the best we can with whatever system we’ve been given, or we can fly around aimlessly, become complicit in our own failure.
With bugs, the light shuts off, or the light eventually runs dry. But the energy of a trauma only reignites every time you gain a sense of it. The trick, I think, is this: you have to disengage it. Remember that, of course, it was the moon that once famously led you there, and trust with all your being that the moon, too, will lead you away.
"Reenacting"
(Forthcoming from The Iowa Review)
"There are bullet holes in those walls,” he said, or, “Jennie Wade died inside that house.” She was the only civilian killed in Gettysburg, he explained, struck dead when a stray bullet pierced her left shoulder and then shot straight through her heart. It came to rest within her corset—“The detail many find most compelling,”—as she was kneading a ball of dough.
This was 8:30 in the morning. “Can you imagine?” he asked, and I did my best to try: I saw her standing in a pleated apron, the bullet splintering a pane of glass the way ice cracks beneath your feet.
"A Slow Kind of Unraveling"
(Forthcoming from Gulf Coast)
The other thing was this: I thought he was sent to me by God. This was just as wild for me, too, believe me. I didn’t even believe in God. But I noticed him and then I began to notice other things: coincidences. I see them now as coincidences, but before I didn’t. He owned the same tin measuring spoon set that my mother did: the one with the uneven coloring and a million shades of gray. And his father had the same birthday I had, and his favorite football team was my favorite football team, and he wasn’t even from that city. The same state, yes, but the other side of it. The one with the other football team. And when he told me his great-grandfather had once owned a house in my hometown, of course I didn’t think that was just a coincidence. That had to mean something.
"The Place We First..."
(Forthcoming in Fourth Genre)
Every Thursday night at seven, I call my brother to hear how the baby is doing. The baby is not yet a baby, just a wet clump of cells, a creature “the size of a lima bean,” my sister-in-law tells me. From my place a thousand miles away, I listen to their report: how they’ve picked out a color for the walls, they say, or are considering the name ‘Russell.’
“It’s Old French,” Lauren says. “Can’t you envision a tiny beret?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes—chewing a baguette, blowing smoke rings.”
"Bigger Than Ourselves"
(Published in Tin House online)
The mutual friend was of shared interest: her purple pants and big, empty house. She reminded us of a librarian and spoke like a dictionary, like a foreign language translation site, coupling the things I knew so well in patterns I had to think about to understand. Her house was a series of rooms with yellow shag, planters drooping low from vintage barstools. I liked her for her strangeness, her unpainted nails and simple hair. From time to time, she spoke to us about existence as one of many simulations, our world a blinking cosmic hard drive, and I liked most to consider that concept. It made me terrifyingly ecstatic: how bad it could get if the plug got pulled. (Read more)
"All We Had"
(Published in The Paris Review online)
The recipe for the dish is my grandmother’s, and it is simple: whisk together flour and egg, whisk until the dough sticks to the spoon and then, at last, snaps back against the bowl. It’s all about consistency, something you can’t put your finger on, something you just have to know. That is why there is no written recipe for this dish, this congealed mess of white that gets boiled in bits and drenched in sour cream and salt and pepper. There is no written recipe because how do you put your finger on dumpling elasticity? (Read more)
"Look Back"
(Published in Tin House online)
“Look back,” he was always saying, as if my memory was broken, a truth I’d later begin to believe. Look back, look back, look back, already mythologizing what we had. Now it’s how I remember him most.
It reminds me of skinning a knee—you know, how it hurts, but then that hurt is only amplified by the power of its own memory? The image of falling and that urgent pain?
Look back. (Read more)
"The Art in Losing"
(Published in The Kenyon Review online)
"Harris," she writes, "played music, wrote software, wrote music, learned to drive, went to college, went to bed with girls, moved to New York, moved to California, went to graduate school, moved back to New York, and went to more graduate school," and while he suffered three separate psychotic breaks, these incidents, Manguso writes, "occupied almost no part of his actual life." Predicated on a critique of contemporary media, Manguso's prose analyzes the way traditional journalism, which aims to streamline information into a more immediate, compact form, inevitably invents narrative.
"Sick"
(Published in The Rumpus online)
I often thought that by this far out, I’d be able to look at what Kevin did and it would seem a distant pinpoint, something small on the horizon, something I experienced and then moved on from. Above all, it seemed this: the past, of course, would pass. Instead, it remains large and looming. I walk my dog now beside the reservoir and of course I think of him. It’s like momentum, I want to say, and what I mean is how it looks when a rock strikes a body of water—how ripples can form and move even long after the stone has sunk. (Read more)
"In Conversation With Our Contemporaries"
(Published in Fourth Genre)
As a whole, the collection brings to mind an exposé I encountered weeks ago on New York City photographer Richard Renald, whose latest work—“Touching Strangers”—pairs unlikely city residents in roles that gesture familiarity: siblings, lovers, neighbors, an elderly woman and her only grandson. Renald began the project six years ago, and to date has collected hundreds of unlikely and intimate portraits whose sentiments—for both the viewer and the subject—strike a remarkably authentic tone. What proves most interesting about Renald’s work is his capacity to forge an authentic sentiment from absolute inauthenticity, for while responsible for posing subjects, Renald is in no way imparting interior feeling. The subjects do that themselves.
"These Storms Both Big And Small"
(Published in Tin House online)
This only five weeks after an EF5 pummeled Moore, Oklahoma, only three weeks after another pummeled Oklahoma City. You were in a hotel in Ohio then, drinking Coors from a tallboy can, and because you’d spent that day on the open road, you watched everything you could: cars crushed the way ice is crushed, houses toppled like Lincoln Logs. Days later, you watched again from a sun-lit living room, safe with your family back East, but all the while you thought of your home in Iowa, thinking, My god, and then: Not there. Now you are here and the storms have joined you. (Read more)
"My Friend, Murderer"
(Published in Salon)
It is tempting—considering recent events—to jump to a grandiose conclusion, or to assert what I have learned, but the truth is, I remain uncertain of nearly everything and fear I always will. But what I will say is that ours is a society of indifference and apathy for the mentally ill, and it’s only through our friendship that I’m well-versed now in its effects. In the past three years alone, over $2.2 billion has been cut from state mental-health budgets, and in his inaugural address as president of the American Psychiatric Association, Paul Appelbaum stated, “Wishing that mental illness would not exist has led our policymakers to shape a health-care system as if it did not exist.”
"Probably It's Nothing"
(Published in Tin House online)
I like you because you take me to neat places like the quarry where we sit in the beds of pickup trucks playing Yahtzee and sipping lemonade. Jean made it fresh for Joe and we both like Joe and especially Jean, and we find their love kind of remarkable and we both say out loud, “Man, they are good,” because they are good people and their love yields this sweet lemonade. Later, in the quarry, we kick around and I try to imagine what's underneath us, all those dark feet below. I like to believe there are cranes down there, and cement trucks, and whole villages full of people, but probably it's just twigs and rocks and probably it's nothing fancy. (Read more)
"There Was A Certain Thrill"
(Published in American Short Fiction)
Becky’s favorite thing she ever did was let Jackson watch her skinny-dip in the earliest hours of morning in the apartment complex’s pool. She put her laptop beside the water, tilted the monitor down so the camera could see her full-on—naked breasts and neck and thighs—then began to peel off her clothing. They were employing Skype to let it happen, and every now and then, a virtual door would slam in the background—another user signing off—and there was a certain thrill in this: no one else knew that she was naked.
"Let's See What Happens"
(Published in Barrelhouse)
A Proactiv commercial plays. “I get breakouts on my back,” the woman in the commercial is saying, spraying soap across her back, over her yellow bikini strap, “and it’s like, 'Ah. I have to hide this.’” A man is heaving a blue duffel bag over his shoulders, kissing an older woman on the cheek, and she begins to cry, drawing her hands to her face. “Am I a hundred percent?” the man’s saying, “I don’t think so. This is not something that can be fixed in a couple of days, but I think now I can work at recovering while I’m at the Shore. I’m trying to get laid tonight,” he says, climbing into the car. “After everything now, I think I deserve to get laid." (Read more)
"Reviews of New Food"
(Published in McSweeney's online)
Humans need an object to hate, William Hazlitt asserted in his 1826 essay “On The Pleasures of Hating,” and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese’s “Home-Style” Dinner Kit gives us a real and tangible form. It is difficult to describe the consistency and flavor of these noodles without first conjuring words like “paint” or “goldenrod paste” or “tube,” but I will try. What you need to know, first and foremost, is that Kraft’s kit contains noodles slightly fatter than the usual elbow and with delicate, rounded divets. Apparently, “home-style” means “kind of artisanal,” as in, “you can’t just get these from any old box”—only with Kraft’s stellar kit.
"Lessons of Grief"
(Published in Vela)
I grieve, Emerson writes in his often-quoted essay “Experience,” that grief can teach me nothing, and perhaps this is my greatest fear: that more than Kevin, more than Emily, more than any inherent violence, I fear that these three years—which have had very little and yet everything to do with me—have ultimately imparted nothing, have caused no wisdom to arrive, that the destination where I now find myself I would have reached even without this trauma. That rather than a journey of knowledge or insight, I have instead suffered my way into a significance that has nothing to do with me.
"Isaac Martin, Gypsy"
(Published in Barrelhouse)
I didn’t even know what it meant to date Isaac Martin, but I imagined it meant everything awesome, because when I looked at him I imagined long walks along the chain length fence that bordered the back of the school’s parking lot, and there’d be exhaust and fumes out there from where our redneck bus sat, idling, but we’d be so in love we wouldn’t even mind. Oh my gosh, do you feel strange, I would say, and he’d say, Yeah, but do you love me as much as I love you? And yes, I’d say, because obviously. I mean, really, come the fuck on.
"Only So Much Monkey"
(Published in The Rumpus)
For whatever reason, my deepest and most private fantasies now involve making a man a roast chicken and then sitting beside him on a couch while he doesn’t drink a million beers but instead asks if I’ll share my blanket. "God damn,” I’ll say, “of course,” and the sweetness I’ll find within that moment will seem so gratifying I might explode. “Like a death star,” I’ll joke gently. “Like I’m evaporating into the fucking cosmos because of how satisfied you’ve made me.” (Read more)
"Light Up And Break"
(Published in The Colorado Review)
This place—our home—was a haven, providing the sort of childhood people rarely believe possible. Each morning, my brothers and I scooted from the breakfast table carved with the imprints of our names to catch salmandars and box turtles, crayfish and trout. We climbed on our bikes and drove the two miles east to throw rocks at fish under a bridge the Pennsylvania Transportation Department had long ago closed down. The pavement buckled and the beams shook when we rode over them, pulling our front tires to jump the planks that blocked the bridge from cars.
"Beneath The Surface"
(Published in The Indiana Review)
It was December then and this, we figured, was the best time to be on such a list. A heart would be salvaged from a car accident that would occur on the way to Christmas dinner or at some point on New Year's Eve. The person would be drunk or not. The accident would occur on a highway or not. The donor would be married or he wouldn't. He would have kids or live alone. It didn't matter. We could not think about this person. He would be what doctors called "a beating heart cadaver," his heart would be flown by helicopter, doctors would remove Robbie's heart, and the new one would go inside the empty cavity in his chest.
"Some Salvation"
(Published in Hobart)
On the long drive home, I passed a few beat-up pick-ups along the shoulder, a four-door here and there, but the drivers were all invisible, hunting deep within the woods or else some swampy, green interior. I don’t know where men hunt. Still, I did my best to picture them: Hearty men, I decided. Men who walk with purpose. These were men who hunted animals until the animals at last gave in, and I couldn’t help but admire them: how they could be honest about that much. (Read more)
"I Was Always Pushing"
(Published in Hobart)
Do you like this place? you asked, and it was the first time you’d ever really asked me anything—all along, I’d just been following behind you in the dark, close, listening to the sound of you. Yeah, I said, I mean, it’s only been a couple of weeks, but yeah, I like it okay, and you said, Good, because I hated it for a year straight, and I said, Really? A whole year? and you said, Yeah, twelve straight months, I straight up literally wanted to die. And all I remember thinking was how a year is a real long time.
"People We Want To Be"
(Published in The Rumpus Funny Women)
I'd been single at that point for some time for no good reason, as far as I could tell, and what with summer quickly approaching, I was in need of a good spider-killer. The bugs crawl under my door and sometimes I find them in my kitchen, quarter-sized and dark. They move fast, these spiders, and there’s only so many I can put in my vacuum before it’s full and I’m too scared to unload it. I have Googled, on several occasions, Can spiders survive a vacuum’s suction and Can spiders survive coated in dust and I can’t tell you what it said, because of the photos that got loaded, but it didn’t look too good for me.
"Engaging An Alien"
(Published in PANK)
It’s over for me on Earth now and I can’t say that I am sorry. The planet spins in the inky distance and it doesn’t matter I won’t come back. It’s not the miles but the time that can make a person quiet. You lose that sense of urgency and you lose your sense to feel. We finish and roll over, and my alien presses me to his torso. We say things into the darkness and I hold him close and put into drawers those things once worth saying. You wouldn’t believe how well it works. You wouldn’t believe how good it feels. (Read more)
"On Fear (And Steak)"
(Published in Hobart)
I began to experience panics about my future, sensations so severe the only solution was to drive to the local mall and walk the upper-level atrium in frantic circles, past Dillard’s and Peeble’s and Macy’s, imagining all the lives I could play out within the careful safety of their storefronts. I returned home with bagfuls of products I didn't need, purchases I could not afford, and the man who greeted me there did not need me at all, either. (Read more)
"Rodent Sounds"
(Published in Necessary Fiction)
Sometimes he comes over to find her curled in bed, her face pressed to expensive pillows, and he scrunches his nose and makes sounds just like a rodent. “Ffffee fffee ffee,” he says into her ear, like a weasel, louder and closer until her body curls and bends and gives. He says this is how he burrows. She laughs and the sadness goes—the despair suddenly less urgent—and if that isn’t love, she sometimes wonders what is. (Read more)
"Gettysburg"
(Published in Upstreet)
We all stumbled around the battlefields, clashing bottles, swallowing shots because we couldn’t hear any. Fifty-thousand men died on the grass where we vomited red wine and tequila, our Sperry topsiders scuffing through soil on Friday nights. We'd come to Gettysburg to be a part of the action, but that action was only ever reenacted, scripted, recorded on tape. It was only women in sunlit yards. It was only men in expensive coats. We tripped over the rocks at Devil’s Den, shining our flashlights in every corner, and spent all our time searching. There was never anything there.
"Hickory Hill"
(Published in Hobart)
She loved him for this and so many things. He knew how to pull off what he did—how to make himself play the part people expected. She couldn’t—hated the idea that she had to be soft or else delicate and clean, because she was small and her eyes opened wide when she spoke. He called her “Careful Eyes,” and also, “innocent.” He said, “You’re probably the most innocent person I know,” and she felt bad about it for days.
"On Eminem (As Essayist)"
(Published in The Rumpus)
There was something about Eminem’s ability to rap I found mesmerizing even at that young age, even before I knew lyrics could have a musical quality all their own. I was an adolescent, just beginning to write poetry and read books for pleasure, but nothing felt as good as listening to Eminem in the privacy of my dark bedroom, where I could hit the rewind button, again and again and again, listen carefully to each line as I thought about how it was formed. (Read more)
"Patterns of the Rails"
(Published in Michigan Quarterly)
He speaks to me in soothing words, but there's an uneasiness in his voice. Later, after we hang up, I lie awake in the darkness and wonder if he wants to fall in love with someone who could get so sick, who could become immobile while pregnant, who could die of something as simple as the flu. He is a boy who runs, a boy who lifts weights and travels to countries I can’t even point to on a map, and what I worry but do not say is: Am I the thing that will slow you down?