Ryan Dennis

The year was 1990. The task: coloring a beaver. It was my first day of kindergarten, and there was a lot on the line as we sat on miniature chairs and looked each other over, trying to figure out where we were going to fit into society.

There’s a lot happening on the planet’s surface right now. Global warming is killing off the biodiversity needed to sustain life as well as creating dangerous weather phenomena.

A significant proportion of my childhood happened in the silence of a tractor cab. There was a brisk manner in which the morning moved from milking to feeding calves to feeding cows, but the afternoon fieldwork was where the day would start to settle out.

If you’re going to murder your love rival, all the better if he has a cool name.

Currently, an Irish jury is deliberating whether to convict 50-year-old farmer Patrick Quirke for killing part-time DJ Bobby Ryan – better known as Mr. Moonlight – out of jealous affection for the 52-year-old farm widow Mary Lowry.

Every English major knows the slagging that comes with announcing your choice of study. Close friends and concerned relatives play it off as a momentary lapse of judgement or quote employment statistics they hastily looked up on their phone.

“Is he still staring at us?” my girlfriend asked.

I glanced over my shoulder. An old man stood in the glaring sun, nude. His small chest was caved-in and bent forward, his legs spindly and knobby.