Companion Animals https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us City Chickens I never thought // I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, / with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house // needs new everything, shingles to foundation.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28990 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-city-chickens 606-22-estep-preview.jpg 606 - Estep - Luterman A Thousand Words A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28983 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-a-thousand-words 606-21-brandao-preview.jpg 606 - Brandao - A Thousand Words Milk Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28993 Sun, 31 May 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-milk 606-30-wild-preview.jpg 606 - Wild - Milk Home Invasions Still, I hadn’t counted on real, live rats. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard them before,” said Rat Guy #1, as he came to be known. “From the looks of it they’ve been here a while.”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28968 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-home-invasions 605-24-mcmanis-preview.jpg 605 - McMains - Myka Bars On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28959 Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/604-bars 604-32-law-preview.jpg 604 - Thomas Law - Bars The Coast of Nowhere II Sleet and black rain / pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn / that reaches through the window, hissing, / Your heart never was a bird let alone / a bright-red singing one.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28955 Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/604-the-coast-of-nowhere-ii 604-46-lockhart-preview.jpg 604 - Lockhart - Dombrowski I Got You “I’m your brother,” the man says, then swallows. He is tall and burly with deep-set blue eyes and thinning hair. He wipes his nose on his flannel sleeve and forks some coleslaw from a plastic container.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28921 Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/602-i-got-you 602-24-hubard-preview.jpg 602 - Hubard - Skirvin Unruly I’m rebellious, defiant, so I’m sent to the barn, driven there by my newly single mom, or my newly single dad, or my grandparents, or someone else. Another parent told my mom I should try horseback riding. Ice-skating and tae kwon do and ceramics didn’t stick, but I can already tell I’m a horse girl.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28920 Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/602-unruly 602-38-wolfe-preview.jpg 602 - Wolfe- Wood Tassajara The abbot declared your beloved pit bull had Buddha nature, / so you carried her sixty muscled pounds to the mountain // monastery, where we sat sesshin and she ate wool socks, / a box of chocolates, and eight pages of Robert Aitken.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28893 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-tassajara Wild Animals Swimming with whale sharks, hearing a mountain lion, refusing to eat a snake

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28871 Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/599-wild-animals 599-33-werdinger-preview.jpg 599-Werdinger-Wild Animals Graffiti A tag on a dumpster, poetry in an outhouse, Viking runes in an underground tomb

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28850 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/598-graffiti 598-32-Davidove-preview.jpg 598-Davidove-Graffiti The Cat Who Woke Me Up The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28846 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28846 598-14-Safransky-preview.jpg 598-Safransky-Safransky Reincarnation Maybe they would come back as cats and lie on sunny windowsills, not touching but close enough to hear each other breathing, to recognize the shift in cadence marking the slip into sleep. Maybe he’d lick his paws while she slept—though maybe he wouldn’t be a he and she wouldn’t be a she, and it wouldn’t matter.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28740 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/592-reincarnation 592-28-lammott-preview.jpg 592-Lammott-Perabo Sunbeams

I knew a pair of Persian cats once; the black one always reclined on a white cushion on the couch, and the white one on the black cushion next to it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to leave cat hair where it showed up best, though cats are always thoughtful about that. They knew where they looked best.

Ursula K. Le Guin

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28728 Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/591-sunbeams 591-49-prentice-preview.jpg OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA 591-Prentice-Sunbeams.jpg OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Conversations With A Banana Spider The smell of wild honeysuckle was everywhere, and the mango trees sagged with the weight of their fruit. I’d often hear the ripe ones fall to the street with a heavy, wet thud, or else bang off the metal roofs of outbuildings where homeless wanderers sometimes slept. This abundance of fruit made Loreto seem like an impossible place to starve, yet I saw a few souls who looked like they were trying their best to do just that. Was it legal, I wondered, to simply reach up and pull a ripe mango from someone else’s tree? Being a foreigner with money, I didn’t need to find out.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28726 Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/591-conversations-with-a-banana-spider 591-40-thomas-preview.jpg 591-Thomas-Zoby Like Love Is A Heart I hate it / when they do that. Like I’m easy / to love. Like love is a heart / he can sit behind / the wheel of, drive / through town, windows / down, dog and girl along / for the ride, as if he’ll never / ever change his mind.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28717 Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/591-like-love-is-a-heart 591-20-werdinger-preview.jpg 591-Werdinger-Didyk Stadium lights on a rainy evening in Joseph, Oregon. Classroom Hatch chera.h.miller@gmail.com I try to feed the chicks mealworms from my hands, / crouching there sometimes for hours. // I can’t remember how / to make them believe in kindness.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28701 Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/590-classroom-hatch 590-45-minor-preview.jpg 3 day old ducklings in palms of farmers hands 590-Minor-Hammons Wild I was a sleepwalker through most of those days. A passenger in / my own life. I couldn’t look / to my family and see myself reflected there. I was / born to no one. I was wild.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28693 Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/590-wild A Thousand Words me@wesleyverhoeve.com A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28682 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-a-thousand-words 589-45-verhoeve-preview.jpg 589 - Verhoeve - A Thousand Words To the Arresting Officer You patted me down roughly, went through my pockets and pulled out three crumpled twenties, some guitar picks, my stepfather’s pocketknife. “You got drugs, son?”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28680 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-to-the-arresting-officer 589-38-welsh-preview.jpg 589 - Welsh - Lyons Why I Respect the Dog The dog weighs twelve pounds / and uses them as she pleases. / The king-size bed is not big enough. / Sleep enabler, stretch-monger, / when she wants to be touched, / she offers up the narrow white arc / of her belly. When a loud face / crowds her, she growls. Or, depending / on the weather, the time, the face, /she doesn’t.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28510 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-why-i-respect-the-dog Canada Day The drive from Homer, Alaska, to Casper, Wyoming, is more than three thousand miles, much of it on winding two-lane highways where moose and bears slip from the underbrush and stand in the road. It had already been a rough trip.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28503 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-canada-day 583 - Hill - Zoby - Preview 583 - Hill - Zoby My Father Not the Sky angela.voras.hills@gmail.com My dad used to wake us up at 5 AM on Sundays / with the vacuum cleaner, saying, Get out of bed, / the day is wasting, and then he’d be asleep on the couch // by nine, just as the sun began to lift its head / over the houses.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28435 Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28435-my-father-not-the-sky White Face, Black Eyes In the hotter months Cactus Country was less a vacation campground and more a land of lost and wandering souls. Like most everyone else who moved to the park during that time, Dave didn’t know how long he would stay or where he would go next.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28412 Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:01:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28412-white-face-black-eyes 581-18-tyree-preview.jpg 581 - Tyree - Bossiere In the Freezer she kept pig haunches, / the shoulder joints of cows, / buffalo neck and guts, / all stuck to the ziplock bags. / If anyone ever asked, / Mother simply laughed.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28416 Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:43 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28416-in-the-freezer When I Come to Get My Things I am amazed at how much of my shit I left / with her, and to see it piled in her hallway / clears space in me for what? // I wander my new emptiness / as the small bag of her things I’ve brought / weighs down my hand

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28407 Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28407-when-i-come-to-get-my-things Surrogates jenniferbowenhicks@gmail.com Twin had lived inside a concrete kennel for four of her five years. Wylie, who also lived inside a concrete box, had gone to prison as a teen. He’d cared for Twin since she was a puppy, which meant he had likely opened her kennel to feed her and let her out thousands of times.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28400 Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28400-surrogates 580-18-anzorena-preview.jpg 580-18-anzorena.jpg 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.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26409 Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:10:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26409-stranger-kin Lawn Skeletons As far as I know, the first house in the neighborhood to adopt a year-round skeleton display was a small Cape Cod a couple of blocks from me. The skeletons sat side by side, day after day, in their Adirondack chairs, holding hands as if starring in a Cialis commercial.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27832 Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27832-lawn-skeletons Poem In Which I Fail To Teach My Dog How To Fetch Here, I call, using the sweet voice the vet psychiatrist recommended, not the hell no one I prefer. Here, I call again.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25927 Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25927-poem-in-which-i-fail-to-teach-my-dog-how-to-fetch