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Culture and Society

Photography

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Photograph By Reuben Radding January 2024
The Sun Interview

Tangled Avenues

Wade Graham on the Interlocking Challenges of the Modern City

Cities are social, so they have the same problems we do. The mistake we always make in our culture is thinking that cities are somehow separate from us and that if we conceive of the right design for them, they will magically relieve us of our problems. By investing this theoretical power in cities, we can avoid confronting the flaws in the way we have built the world: with inequality and oppression and systems that make some people’s lives miserable while other people’s lives are good.

By Dash Lewis January 2024
Quotations

Sunbeams

The city was lovely. There could be no place in the world to which he belonged so completely. That was why he’d always dreamed of leaving, and why he’d always been so afraid to go.

Daniel Alarcón, At Night We Walk in Circles

January 2024
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Anger Management

Dr. B. spun a finger in the air, his signal to let the games begin. I think I called Michael a “no-good fucking loser,” a put-down one of my bosses had once leveled at me. I watched Michael’s hands form fists and the whites of his eyes get bigger.

By Mishele Maron January 2024
Fiction

Falling Action in Hoboken

There is something hard in me, a seedlike malignancy. I can’t say how it got there or when, but I can’t remember the last time I felt pure love or sadness or joy. It’s always a mix of things, some confused and muted in-between.

By Lucy Tan January 2024
Poetry

I Was Carrying a Velvet Wingback through the Streets of Houston

Who isn’t, at twenty-three, sexy? In never-been-kissed / cutoffs with buzzed hair. Did I even have a beard yet? / I looked like the virgin I was—was, at least, in all / the interesting ways. “Chicken,” they would’ve said / back then.

By Benjamin S. Grossberg January 2024
Readers Write

Drama

A high-school play, a support group, a catechism class

By Our Readers January 2024
Poetry

Last Bath

It hasn’t happened yet: the awkward bloom / of my children’s bodies, the bathroom pin-lock / pushed in, the steady stream of marathon showers, / bolts of thick steam all shadowy blue.

By Jared Harél December 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Stranger Kin

I don’t recall now if he barked, if he made a sound. How did it happen, that the rest came? They must have been summoned somehow. But it so happened that another dog appeared, lumbering toward us, followed by another, and a third and fourth, until there were five dogs gathered on the rocks. Five huge Istanbul dogs.

By Wiam El-Tamami December 2023
Photography

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Photograph By Rachelle Steele December 2023