Listen hard! Do you cheeka windchuckle against a coldyear? I promise you,in a place with everyonethere is patience, and a warmthready to give you full home. —from “My Heartful Songlikes,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I don’t really remember much of how the . . .
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Mimi herself wasn’t on great terms with the ancestors. Her altar was stuffed in the corner next to the laundry hamper, a sweat-stained sports bra thrown hastily over the incense sticks. She hadn’t made a chicken thigh or alcohol offering since Po Po’s diagnosis three years ago. And she certainly would never . . .
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Oliver de la Paz’s latest poetry collection, The Diaspora Sonnets, is out now from Liveright Press; three of these sonnets were published in our Spring 2023 issue. Crown for the Girl Inside, Lisa Low’s debut chapbook, is out now from YesYes Books; Low’s poem “Ars Poetica” was featured in our Spring 2022 issue. Trio . . .
Read MoreBut I like itBecause it is bitter—Stephen Crane It’s audaciously hoppy for me!Bring on bitterest beer ecstasies!They’re not one big “hop bomb.”Brewers craft, with aplomb,The hop spectrum. Such badassery! Some fear hops and endeavor to slayEvery tongue-biting flavor awayWith juicification—An abomination!Give me robustly bold IPAs! If your tongue is too weak, step aside!I advise . . .
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It helps to think of your mindas a landscape. Picture the groovesand valleys carved like a penknifeto bark from years of compulsions;it’s so easy following where the floodknows it must go.—from “From the Porch, A Moth,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.One . . .
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I hate AJ, Sam says, he stealsmy blocks and punches me. AJdidn’t go to preschool. Here in the kitchenmy son narrates his day: phonics, Play-Doh,the device he calls sand timer whisking awaychoice time.—from “Bioluminescence,” Volume 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Fourth grade, a poem called “Breeze.” Everyone around . . .
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July 17, 2023 To the Administrators of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center: We, the editors of the Massachusetts Review, are writing to express our deep disappointment and concern regarding the recent and very unexpected cancellation of this year’s Asian American Literary Festival, just weeks before its opening and after over a year . . .
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Less his offense and more the punishment, how Actaeon was pursuedby his own hounds, devoured by that which he thought he had tamed—is that what I mean when I say I, too, watched hungerconsume me?—from “Actaeon,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.This . . .
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Mirinae Lee’s debut novel, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster, has been published by Harper Collins. Lee’s story “Me, Myself, and Mole” appeared in our Fall 2021 issue. Tupelo Press just released Wind—Mountain—Oak: The Poems of Sappho, a collection of the Greek poet as translated by Dan Beachy-Quick, whose original poetry was published in . . .
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Al had not been blessed with charm. Or pleasing aspect. Or verve. Or intellect, that I could discern, though she must have had some scrap of it to have gained acceptance in the first instance. She was a lumpen thing, all fuzzy hair, pigeon toes, and befuddled grin, her broad back humping . . .
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