We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
I find talking on the phone to be one of the purest forms of communication. You are receiving the person’s voice, their tone, their laughter, without the distraction of their clothing, their hairdo, their body. I don’t care what someone looks like. I want to hear them sigh with exhaustion or cackle with delight. I want to hear tiny details of the environment from which they speak: birdsong, barking dogs, the beep of a microwave.
By Becky MandelbaumNovember 2024Driving upstate with my father / at the end of a bad year. Trees begin / to outnumber houses. Rain turns to snow / as fields hang like paintings. / Dad fills his lip with chew, talks.
By C.L. O’DellNovember 2024There are countless theories about the origins of the pebble storms. The one that makes the most sense to me is something about melting ice caps and ocean acidification and dying coral reefs.
By Peter StensonOctober 2024Teenage parties, lost treasures, wartime bomb shelters
By Our ReadersOctober 2024The mountain in winter enables the kind of sleep that restores, heals, allows brains to solve problems. The days have more than enough darkness to crawl inside.
By Todd DavisOctober 2024
In the small, trembling room of my longing, A., / Last night—summer wearing the walls, autumn / Spread in orange colors on the floor, upon which / We lay, two quiet pianos, soul music pouring / Over the hidden grass—we touched, my face to the mirror of yours.
By Ernest ÒgúnyẹmíSeptember 2024The omen comes in the ruin of a robin’s egg on the sidewalk: fractured blue splattered with the pink makings of a flightless thing. A plum membrane of skin stretched over eyes like bruises. I make the mistake of looking back at this small disaster, and then the calamity of it fingers the threads of my morning.
By Valentina Ríos RomeroSeptember 2024Missed calls, misheard lyrics, mistaken identities
By Our ReadersSeptember 2024I’d thought the transcripts would help me write a letter to the parole board, but when I opened them, I saw a section of my own testimony at Maynard’s trial, and that was that. My head filled with hissing static; my heart raced.
By Erin McReynoldsSeptember 2024Sonja wakes to a stranger’s voice in the boat with her. A man’s voice. A panicked moment passes before she realizes that it’s coming over the radio and not from inside the cabin. “Aidez-moi,” the man says. “Help. Ayúdame. Please.” His call cuts in and out between the fuzz of the handheld VHF’s granular static.
By Kirsten Sundberg LunstrumAugust 2024Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today