take off your uber-huge headphones to do it

So please, keep an eye out for us, and take a story–we won’t even make you let go of your coffee or

take off your uber-huge headphones to do it.

*Did you know that this was found to be the “most romantic NYC subway station,” according to a

Craigslist Missed Connections study?

I grew up on the North Shore of Boston, where fireworks are always shot over the water, a spectacle

best watched from the cold sand of the beach at night, or, if you’re lucky, a boat, where folks blast

air horns in approval at the sight of the best explosions. It was just before the 4th of July when I

first read Claire Vaye Watkins’s “Man-O-War,” and all those memories came flooding back, but without

the water. Set on a desert lakebed in Nevada, this beautiful short story follows an old miner named

Harris, still working his few small claims and hoping one day to strike gold. On the side, he wakes up

early on the morning of July 5th and scavenges fireworks left behind in the desert by local drunken

teenagers. What he finds instead one day is a young pregnant girl, beaten and abandoned. He takes her

home and while he cares for her, discovers something he thought he’d lost–one last chance to spark to

life before burning out into the darkness. Claire Vaye Watkins does an extraordinary job capturing the

spare life of this lonely miner, building the tension of his fragile hopes until the final pages. You

can find out more about how Claire wrote this story, and the inspiration behind it, at her Q&A with us.

But for now, let’s sit back and watch the show she’s created, and when the colors spin and dazzle and

boom, blow our airhorns, OOO and AAAHHH.