Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell

the Seths were undainty eaters; we fed them a commercial diet, which we ordered from Louisiana breeders, mostly chicken and fish but occasionally more whimsical proteins: frozen nutria, muskrat, beaver, horse. The Seths regurgitated bones and feathers.

“Prove to them that you can lose, so you can surprise people, honey, and win.”

"Prove to them that you can lose, so you can surprise them and win."

Anger needed an anchor, a plug, a wall. (I am angry because of ______.) Otherwise you had a beam of red feeling searching vainly through the universe. You had a heart that shot red light into space.

twin volcano peaks.

I believe I met my mother there, in the final instant. Not her ghost but some vaster portion of her, her self boundlessly recharged beneath the water. Her courage. In the cave I think she must have lent me some of it, because the strength I felt then was as huge as the sun. The yellow inside you that makes you want to live. I believe that she was the pulse and bloom that forced me toward the surface. She was the water that eased the clothes from my fingers. She was the muscular current that rode me through the water away from the den, and she was the victory howl that at last opened my mouth and filled my lungs.