Grodstein is the author of four previous books, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family and the Washington Post Book of the Year The Explanation for Everything. She was kind enough to answer some of my questions regarding OUR SHORT HISTORY, out now from Algonquin Books.

The parents come home tired, they come home smiling, they come home angry, they come home drunk.

That night in April. / That other night in April. 

soliciting chimps / in the shit cage

There are meetings in places that come disguised as something else.

Honoring AV Club's restraining order against me from this day forward

Dear Editor,         or         Owl

Attached are poems in which I spin my head three hundred sixty degrees attempting to stare at myself. Attached are poems in which I attempt to eat myself

Shane said I needed to be more social, network with the other teachers. I told him it was pointless.

“I look forward to the time when I shall refuse to learn another thing, having accumulated errors enough.” Charles Fort

He can’t respond to the man addressing him as Mr. Sport because he can’t talk, his tongue has been mangled, somewhat ineptly, and he sees the hilarity in this, being tortured by inept torturers, as another larger silent gentleman’s behind him, but if it weren’t him in the chair, if it were someone else and he was watching, he might be amused by these two dilettantes practicing the art of torture.

It's the middle of winter. My last submission was rejected with good cause. It went a little off the deep end.

& spread / my arms out / like a giant squid

Congratulations! Your employer is an open-minded, inclusive institution that has discovered a method to ensure the comfort of their gender non-conforming employees, and that method is buttons.

From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah
Nirvana
Label: DGC
Released: October 1st, 1996
Length: 17 songs, 54 minutes

Last time I saw you, a good foot separated the two of us. Walked up

I want to be a zygote again. / I want to be a dumb plant.

The woman sat on the train wrapped tightly in her coat. She stared at herself in the window and eyed the other passengers.

My therapist’s name was Sean. I remember that most of all because it was easy for me to say. The sound sh never caused trouble. I could curse or tell people to shut up all day long. But es caused a world of trouble. 

The fact of his wariness stops her; Viv gathers the remaining clumps of her hamburger, squeezes them between her fingers but no juice comes out. She stares at the clumps. 

No good relationship, if you could call it that, ever started in a bar.

When clearly it could be a mommy or even a child for that matter.

I remember Ian saying I was not a novelist and I think, as much as it pained me at the time to hear this, he was correct.

A woman waited in line in front of me, anxiously watching the television behind the plexiglass partition. The gas station attendant broke rolls of quarters in half and dropped them into the register. A second woman spoke on screen, dressed in an orange pant suit, matching neon lipstick and a gold crescent moon pinned to her lapel below her microphone. I imagined the petroleum-wax scent her breath might leave as she spoke.          

My god, I remember how badly I wanted her to see.