Aaron Dixon

My daughter is still young enough to draw pictures of fairies on all of her school notebooks, but at other times her oldness is startling. For example, when she was the flower girl at her mother’s second wedding, she explained to me that she needed her underwear to match her dress, in case her dress flipped up. Her mom and I are on good terms: I was also invited to the wedding, and I attended, and at one point I was even asked to stand up and speak, but I don’t remember what I said. When I woke … [Read more...] about Filler

Hedy loved Polly, the parrot at Trader Bob’s airport bar. Hedy went directly there every day after work at the Terminal A newsstand. Hedy loved the way Polly echoed desire, like a mirror. So when she went there once again to sit across from Polly—to hear Polly say back to her “you are the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow”—but instead found the cage empty, she felt as Narcissus might, were he to gaze into the pool and see nothing but water. Hedy had envied Polly’s position, how everyone loved Polly as … [Read more...] about Like an Original Response

In the beginning, I think everyone was afraid. You can imagine how startling it was the day the fingertips of that enormous hand came up out of the sands of Punta del Este and reached for the sun. Reached for it in a grasp, as if it were trying to crush the sun in its fist. People were, understandably, frightened. Sunbathers on the scene said they thought it was an earthquake, until the fingers appeared, shooting out of the ground. It tried to snatch the sun, they said. One man, a Uruguayan on … [Read more...] about The Swimmers