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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 2024Somehow my bubble went unpunctured for twenty-four years, allowing me and my coffee-colored skin to arrive in Hartford, Arkansas, blissfully ignorant of what my Blackness might mean in this place.
By Chante OwensSeptember 2024Since I had no one else to ask, I asked the hunger where it wanted to go. It said, West, like that was a point on the map called Freedom. So I drove west. I stopped at a Walmart somewhere in Kansas and bought a propane camp stove and a tent, because hotels were not in the budget.
By Kate OsterlohJuly 2024The Paradise Inn sits at 5,400 feet on the south slope of Mount Rainier, the highest peak in Washington State. Up here the air is thin and crisp, the colors are saturated, and every breeze carries an aroma of pine and the trill of birdsong. Even immersed in such concentrated beauty, my heart aches. For the hundredth time today I think of Jack, a fellow writer in the graduate program I recently completed. We bonded over our love of books and our homesickness for the Midwest.
By Becky MandelbaumJune 2024Gobbling tortilla chips with gleeful abandon, I forget to chew, and one triangle catches in my throat. Instantaneous panic. Sudden, deep, mammalian fear.
By Leath ToninoMay 2024What if I’d said yes? Imagine I go home with you that night, / when I’m twenty, and when we wake up in the morning, / you ask, You know you snore? You laugh at my / nighttime retainer, which I’ll wear for the rest of my life, and say, You look hot.
By Chrys TobeyMay 2024He looked hardy, and, God, I’m a sucker for hardiness. Show me a pocketknife and callused hands, and I’m ready to let you feel me up. His profile had a photo of him holding a giant golden eagle in Mongolia. Looking back, I can see it was partly the eagle I swiped right on.
By Stacy Boe MillerMay 2024Any comedian will tell you, losing an audience’s attention for even a split second can snowball. Handle it wrong, and you may die onstage like Elvis on the toilet, like Lenny Bruce beside the toilet, like William Howard Taft in a bathtub near a toilet.
By Andrew GleasonMay 2024Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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