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Cohen: Do you think part of that evil spirit is found in every human?
Sullivan: I don’t think we’re born with it, but we have receptors that can connect to it, and we decide how much attention we give it, how much we turn toward its allure.
By Finn CohenApril 2025April 2025Good and evil, as we term them, are not antagonistic; they are ever found hand in hand. Humanity has never achieved a single conquest without the aid of both. Indeed how can she? What adds to moral strength, but a grappling with temptation?
Sarah Grimké
An elderly man prepares broccoli with slivered almonds and lemon juice, his hands shaky. An elderly woman snores and dreams in her cane rocker, Brahms crescendoing on the radio, Wheel of Fortune muted on the television.
By Leath ToninoApril 2025Denise figured the mom was dead; she had to be. The dad did the shopping now, and unless the mom was traveling for work for, like, a month or something, it was the only explanation.
Point of fact: Just last month the daughter and the mom had been talking while checking out at Denise’s register, and the daughter had asked for Lunchables, and the mom had said, “You will eat those over my dead body.”
Now the dad was buying five of them a week.
By Tara McCarthy AltebrandoApril 2025When you get to your father's bedroom, you see Dad shaking like a freshly fumigated bug. Your brother is by his side on the phone, his face red and sweaty, like when he's been skateboarding all day.
By Christina BerkeApril 2025Poorly—and purposefully—placed slogans, baby-goat encounters, and uncanny AOL connections
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.
By Susan PeraboApril 2025I prefer the fence-colored bird / who has no song, / or none that he shares with me. // Each day at dusk he stops by to scold me. / Quietly, with a stiff hop. / He seems to know I’ve wasted the day.
In my writing class last Thursday, Cara said it’s a shame that the word humane has human in it, as if only humans had compassion. Then Beth said it’s a problem that human has the word man in it. So we were trying to find another word. Dan suggested “humom.” Because, at our best, we are all like mothers. So maybe that can be the name of our movement: humomism.
By SparrowApril 2025The first step is to imagine. / No, before that: breathe. Breathe, and know / breath. That’s where it begins.
By Richard ChessApril 2025Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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