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Poetry

This Little Bit I Am Trying To Hold

Poems About Departures

I will leave you, / and I will / leave the sudden // darkness of afternoon thunderstorms / and I will leave / the rain and its patience in shaping mountains

from “I Will Leave,” by Michael Bazzett

 

I am here to translate my father’s death / into fruit. Something that can be held. To bring / it up to your lips the way I spooned strawberry / yogurt up to his and said to him the word “Eat.” / There was no use, in the end. There was no hunger.

from “I Did What I Could to Keep This,” by Peter Markus

 

Tonight, because all matter is dissolving, you & I / are being gradually undressed by the universe — // silk & wool molecules mingling with cells / rising from skin like souls

from “Everything,” by Terry Lucas

By Michael Bazzett, Peter Markus & Terry Lucas November 2023
Fiction

Deformation Catalog

I had thought nobody understood dark matter — that it was, fundamentally, an encapsulation of all we didn’t know. But it turned out other people’s lack of understanding took the form of complex theories, mathematical equations, computer programs that turned impenetrable data into different impenetrable data. Other people’s confusion was a castle you could live inside, a whole architecture of the unknown. My confusion was a wall I kept walking into.

By Emet North November 2023
The Sun Interview

Burning Questions

Meg Krawchuk On Our Changing Relationship With Fire

A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.

By David Mahaffey October 2023
Poetry

Total Solar

We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.

By John Bargowski August 2023
The Sun Interview

No Small Wonder

Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe

Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.

By Mark Leviton August 2023
Announcements

This Month In Sun History

Our 50th Year Of Publication

The Sun’s first-ever website launched in August 1999, into a world of staticky dial-up tones, GeoCities, and frequent buffering. It came about thanks to the generosity of two Sun subscribers. . . . Shelley Sherman and Meredith Tupper took it upon themselves to build a modest, stately website that perhaps undersold the magazine: “If you haven’t heard of The Sun,” the About page read, “you’re not alone.”

By The Sun July 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Chair / Body / Home

What would it take for me to no longer want to leave my body? What would it take for me to see my body as my home? I don’t know, really, except perhaps more exposure to different ideas about disability, different ideas about beauty and worth.

By Hannah Soyer June 2023
The Sun Interview

Open Ears

Kelefa Sanneh On What Popular Music Can Teach Us About Each Other

It wouldn’t surprise me if people looked back in twenty or thirty years and said, “This was the Bad Bunny era” — that those Spanish-language musicians have the same kind of influence today as the hip-hop pioneers and the punk pioneers did in the 1970s.

By Finn Cohen June 2023
The Sun Interview

Don’t Panic

Rebecca Priestley On Finding Hope Amid The Climate Crisis

I’m not talking about burning the system down. . . . I simply think that the things we can do to respond to climate change will also make the world a better place for most people.

By Dash Lewis May 2023
Readers Write

The Phone

Prank calls, long-distance connections, secret messages

By Our Readers January 2023