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10 Questions for Chen Po-Yu

June 18, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

You were a wooden coat hanger.
Your body, half-clothed. No hat could alter your looks.
No gentleman’s hat that tipped to highlight
Your smile. You were an exquisite gentleman’s
Coat hanger, with pale skinny arms growing upward.

The wood grain was fading, paler and paler.
The winter, too, was half-clothed. No gentleman’s hat
Could disguise the looks of the past.
No gentleman could. No black gentleman’s hat could.
The gentleman who kept a cat
Could wait at a station in winter.
Like a tree that grew paler and paler, leaves falling.
—from "Coat Hanger," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the...

Critical Counterinsurgency and Zionism

June 14, 2024 - By Kerry Sinanan

When the Tree rises up, the branches
Shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
The laughter of the Tree shall leaf
Beneath the sun
And birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.

            —Fadwa Tuqan, from “The Deluge and the Tree”

The very title of Adam Shatz’s most recent, unfortunate piece of writing announces itself clearly as Zionist apologia. “Israel’s Descent” invokes Charles Darwin’s The Descent...

“Some Sing”: A Juneteenth Celebration at the Lincoln Center

June 13, 2024 - By Carl Hancock Rux

Presented here is Carl Hancock Rux's Artist Statement for his forthcoming Juneteenth celebration at Lincoln Center

"It was while singing... the idea of escaping from slavery was first suggested to my mind." —Frederick Douglass

African American music is inseparable from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the forced transportation of millions of African people across the Atlantic, who were then subjected to slavery. The cultures from which they were torn and the conditions into which they were forced both contributed to the sounds of African American music. Many of the instruments historically used in African American music, including the...

April/May 2024 MR Contributor Publications

June 12, 2024 - By Staff

Translated by Robin Myers, The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón is out with Archipelago Books. She has been published a couple times in MR, both as a poet and translator.

Table for One, the...

An Interview with Sophie Wan

June 11, 2024 - By Acree Graham Macam

In some ways I regret how I thought about marriage on the day of my wedding, December 7, 2013. At the time, my partner and I believed that God had led us to one another, that divorce could only be a tragic last resort, and that it was my husband’s role as a man to be the “leader” in our family.

Ten years and a fundamental shift in beliefs later, somewhat impossibly, we’re still together. We changed in many of the same ways at roughly the same times, and our relationship supported those changes rather than cracking beneath them. Now, with two young children, we relate to one another on a day-to-day basis largely as co-parents. Sometimes I think our wedding—with its tealight-topped tables, signature cocktails, and professional photographer—set...