I like a bricks-and-mortar bookstore as much as the next person—don’t even ask me how much I spent last week at Porter Square Books—but I’ve got an Amazon habit like you wouldn’t believe. It’s true that I’ve held out against the lure of one-click ordering. I even practice a stringent routine of self-editing: I [...]

On the third day the ardent hermit
Was sitting by the shore, in love,
Awaiting the enticing mermaid,
As shade was lying on the grove.
Dark ceded to the sun’s emergence;
By then the monk had disappeared,
No one knew where, and only urchins,
While swimming, saw a hoary beard.
–Aleksandr Pushkin
Rusalka, 1819

I: Snail Into Shell
Rybka, you have to wake up.
At night [...]

Leszek Kostuj was born in Poland (Pleszew) in 1973 and graduated from Pedagogy and Art Department at Adam Mickiewicz University…