Chef's House by:Raymond Carver

Poem: "I Married You" by Linda Pastan, from Queen of a Rainy Country. © W.W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

I Married You

I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naïve ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.

This poem has a few connections with Chef's House. In Chef's House Wes and Edna are married and Edna married Wes even though he was an alcohic. Wes and Edna after a while fall apart and one summer they come back together and are in love but the wife, Edna doesn't want to be with Wes again after the summer so they end up not being together. The poem is about this woman that fell in love with this man and then later on realizes she has made a mistake because he is not what she wants and that is like Edna in Chef's House.

The Bees by: Dan Chaon

http://www.classicalconnect.com/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Grancher%20/Scheherasade_Part/4209

This song, Scheherasade Part II by Jean-Francois Grancher best fits the mood and tone for this story because the story is very mysterious. You never know what is going to happen next and you don't know the full detail about this man, Genes past. The music is suspense and works well with the story because the story has much suspense too.

On the Rainy River by: Tim O'Brien

A story which is set back in summer of 1968 where a young man was being forced to go into the war. The man was just afraid and he felt to good and to smart for the war. He was a very isolated man and was just nervous, scared and just did not want to go to war.

                                 

I chose this image because it is a tear drop and it fits well with the man, Tim, in the story because he is very upset and afraid to go into the war.
The words were a quote in the the story by Tim just crying out the reasons why he does not want to go into the war and fight.

Blood by: Zdravka Evtimova

An old man owns a small reptile pet shop and he has no business. Because of having no business the sad man will have to close his shop.

One day this woman came in very upset asking the man that owns the shop if he had the blood of a mole because her son is sick and he needed it to survive.

The moles blood can cure sick people.

The man felt so sorry for the woman and he had no moles so he cut his own wrist and gave her the blood.

The woman stared at the cut wrist and knew he was giving her his own blood but she was so desperate that she did not care.

It was very cozy and quiet in the shop when the woman came back a few days later, so happy that his blood saved her sons life.

The same day the woman came in with the good news a man came in and squeezed his arm until three drops went into his little bottle and then just left.

The word got around town and a mob of people were outside his shop the following day chanting "Blood of a Mole!"

The mob of people had a knife in their hands to get blood from the man.

The shop turned around quick and the old man had tons of business!

Because of all the business the old man was getting he wouldn't have to close his shop.

"Blood of the Mole" cured sick people and everyone wanted and needed it.