Matt Hackett

She loved him. She was helpless before the whole emotional project of him. But it didn’t preclude hating him and everything around him, which included herself, the sound of her own voice—and the sound of his, which was worse. The portraits of hell never ceased and sometimes were done up in raucous, gilded frames to console. Romantic hope: From where did women get it? Certainly not from men, who were walking caveat emptors.

“Wings,” from Lorrie Moore’s new Bark, which I only now notice has kept my jaw clenched for the good part of an hour.