Issue 534 | The Sun Magazine

June 2020

Readers Write

Fear

Of failure, of the high dive, of other people

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

June 2020

Featuring Michael Meade, Pema Chödrön, Peter A. Selwyn, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

Here Together

These days I can see us clinging to each other / as we are swept along by the current

By W.S. Merwin
Quotations

Sunbeams

Diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

The Sun Interview

The Power Of Story

Jared Seide On How Listening To Each Other Can Restore Our Humanity

People want to celebrate the things that symbolize generosity and goodness in their lives. To share that with others and have others understand that this means something to you — that’s an extraordinary act of communion.

By Hazel Kight Witham
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Just This Breath

I can’t see the virus, but I feel its seeds in me. I can’t see my faith, but I feel its seeds in me, too.

By Heather Sellers
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Last Writes

My friend possessed the inclination and the ability to turn her experience of the world into a language that insisted on delighting in itself.

By Chris Bursk
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Ramshackle Garden Of Affection

Dear Ross: How can you miss on purpose? If I’m late getting back on defense, you’ll bounce the ball off the bottom of the rim and catch the “rebound” for a point. Alone under the basket. Missing.

Dear Noah: Bouncing the ball off the bottom of the rim is, as you say, a poorly missed shot, but also a perfectly missed one, because it results in a point in our game, which means it’s a way for me to stay on the court. If there were a way I could stay on the court without cheating — without those perfectly, beautifully missed shots — believe me, I would do it.

By Ross Gay & Noah Davis
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “Wanting Not Wanting” | I wish I didn’t / want things / to be other / than they are

By John Brehm
Poetry

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Life Before The Virus

I. / I remember shaking hands: / damp sweaty hands and dry scratchy hands, / bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes, / two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched / between a pair of big beefy palms.

By Lesléa Newman