Ian M. Anderson

Fever has sent me spiraling into the past, I smell the ancient dust in Lessingham's parlor, and now the newsprint, upon which I saw his name for the first time, rises out of that same fog I thought I escaped. -- But no! His is the nightmare, and I'm sure of it! He possesses what each man longs to take of his own accord. Yes, his is the nightmare. *** I was young and building a name for myself as an art dealer. No family of my own to restrict my travels, I was eager to find a rarity, something no one looked for or expected to exist, something ancient. The normal studios and art shows wouldn't do. I learned the names of those who sold what they did not own and reaped what they did not sow. A man named Daha led me to Lessingham. Daha had collected a map of sorts, a trail of clippings, stolen manifests, and ill-got receipts that led, he said, to this Lessingham and the astonishing pieces in his possession. He twisted in his seat and pulled at his cigarette when I asked h...

Our little one -- there! the boy crouched within the yellow forsythia blossoms -- he waits beyond his years, is patient as an old man is forced to be patient, for he hunts the butterflies that will soon come to this bright corner of the yard; no, he does not hunt them as most boys would, for a collection. He wants their sound. All else he's captured: the colors, the shapes, delicate both, but isn't the sound impossible? More delicate than their wings, than the multitude of scales we call "dust," is the sound wave created by the flap and dip of the butterfly. Boy is covered in pollen. The skin on his forearms sticks to the skin on his biceps. Behind him, the sun is reluctant to set, and his eyes blink away tears from the glare reflecting off the tall windows a few feet away. A flurry of excited sparrows fill the branches surrounding him, one or two mistaking his head and knee for forsythia. Their argument swirls and expands to the nearby turf, to the maple trees on t...

Fire escape: Mark Sonata stood here, naked but for thin briefs that the rain pasted to his skin. His hands squeezed the metal rail and showed white with the pressure; breaths came, his shoulders heaved, and the dawn heard his anger. Anger born of shame. A scream. *** There was a time in Mark's second life when the pain from this anniversary came easily -- when he would slip into a void, the anguish in his chest; agony was fitting, and it was apt to be crushed. But that was years ago. The mourning never fully ceased, but there came a new ability to cope that arose from the death of the shock, the first blow. Diana's death, Mark carried it with him, but the wound rarely reopened completely. And he hated himself for it. *** All morning long the sound of rain -- through Mark's open apartment windows, on the metal fire escape, on the outstretched beech branches along the street, and now on the folded newspaper he held over his head as he prepared himself for the me...

There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. -- Psalm 104.26 "Call me Ishmael." These are the famous words that open  Moby-Dick . The words that scholars highlight and readers remember. The words that actually open the book are all but ignored. *** I said, "I need to rent a boat," and the air in the store changed, like I'd committed some major social blunder. I could see it in the cashier's eyes. She looked at me over her glasses, one eyebrow raised, her lips pursed, and her head cocked. "I'm from New Castle." I felt the customers behind me. They were no longer shopping. I waited for her to help me, but she didn't reply. I was hostage to her scrutiny until I talked. "Do you have boats to rent?" I knew they did. From where we stood, I could see the colorful sides of blue and red rowboats hanging on a rack that spanned the length of the store outside. The cashier's mou...

"David, I see you have your belt on." Mrs. Carver Chestnut lived next door to David, and many evenings they sat together under his walnut trees. The branches of the walnuts shaded his yard to the south, and when the day wore down, his dining room windows testified to their golden leaves. "Yes, Ma'am, I do have my belt on," David said. He ran his fingers over his new prized possession. "Thank you for it." "Well, David, Mr. Chestnut thought you'd like it." "How did he know?" David's brows furrowed in genuine inquisitiveness. "The other day, you know what he said to me? He said, 'David has all sorts of tools and things. I bet I know what he needs.' That's all I got out of him." She laughed and bit into a gingersnap. "I brought this plate of cookies over, David, and you haven't touched one of 'em." "Oh," he said, and took one. "That's right. He d...

"You crashed." These two words were repeated from a fog at my elbow as I regained consciousness. My wrist throbbed, and my car hissed behind me. "You crashed." "Yes, I know." "But why are you out here?" Lucidity came with pain. "I -- got out. Tripped over this planter." The last time I looked at the car clock it read 4:12am. My eyes had been too heavy. I woke with my head on the steering wheel, my Toyota crumpled against a concrete wall that jutted into the street. Sweet potato vines spilled over the edge. "I heard you crash." "Yeah. I'm sure it was loud." Next to me sat a man who seemed almost too massive to be real. His legs were crossed, and he smiled before he repeated that, yes, it was loud. "I think I hit my head on the sidewalk," I said. "You're bleeding." When I didn't respond, he said, "You're bleeding." "Yes." "My name's Ma...

The dormitory tiles are asbestos, white with specks, like a bird's egg. I don't know what kind of bird. Those speks are elongated in places, but that had to be the original design. It's not as though anything on the actual tiles has moved. My desk rests on hollow metal posts, and in places I can see where it is anchored to the wall with large screws. I run my fingers over them sometimes. One has been stripped enough to be sharp to the touch. A pale green top, a thick wooden shelf, a bare bulb hidden under the shelf with a string to pull to light it. When I need to concentrate, I think about my desk, especially when they laugh or talk. Like they are now. I don't have books. Well, I have one or two. Mostly, though, I have notebooks stacked on the wooden shelf right over where the bulb is. Two red ones and the rest are black. Composition notebooks with the speks in black or red. I know I said the floor is specked, and I thought of a bird's egg then, but those n...

Three people, one night, a long morning. January 13 & 14, 20--. One of our subjects is 18 months old, dressed in little more than a diaper. Another tries to pray himself to sleep but fails. The third drifts -- like the snow that began to fall around 10:00 the night of the 13th. 9:48pm, 13 January The child heard the popping duct, and she waddled to the nearest register. Her hand touched the warm air. "Hot," she whispered around the opposite middle and index finger. She squatted down to look into the vent cover, but the heat brought water to her eyes and took her breath for a moment. She would have moved away if her feet and legs, which were both uncovered, had wanted to; she put her toes where the metal had warmed and smiled. "Hot," she said. Then she cried for a minute because her stomach rolled and squirmed, there, while the warm air pushed strands of her hair straight back, but it wasn't long enough for tears to come because of it, and her knees rema...