I will try to put this in perspective in the coming weeks. Heading down to Ocean Road Beach just after sunrise, standing at the water’s edge, looking toward the horizon for signs of calm and peace, I’ll interpret an overhead blue heron as postive harbinger, a far-off tanker as portent of stability.—from . . .
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Cover Art: Susan Jahoda, From the series (in preparation for absence), Untitled, silver print, 16×20 inches, 1999. ©Susan Jahoda, used with permission. All Rights Reserved. A PDF of Roe: Telling the Tale is available here. Available from Amazon, Kobo, and Weightless Books. (All profits from sales will be donated to the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts)
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BEFORE MY HUSBAND, Len Berkman, and I married in September 1962, we spent the summer of that year in my hometown, San Jose, California. While working as a reporter for the Milpitas Post on the outskirts of San Jose, Lenny met Patricia Theresa “Pat” Maginnis. Pat offered night classes in English to . . .
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At the university where I worked part-time the most it would cost $700 per month for just my health insurance, much more for my family. This university owned like a quarter of the city. Maybe you could get your BA in landlording. Trump is one of their best-known alums. In those years . . .
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Anthony Gormley, “Float,” 1992. Author’s collection. With kind permission from the author and artist. This essay was written in Rome on the eve of what may be a turning point in the fortunes of democracy, the political system that Plato called a “ship of fools” for its tendency to elect incompetent captains . . .
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Garnet like the edges of Bible pages—no, not that dark, think brighter, more sacred, less symbol of hatred, moreof the revered called to repair this land’s flag bothered ragged by those cured with the devil’s mark—from “Hydra,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Not . . .
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MR’s poetry editor Nathan McClain’s latest collection, Previously Owned, is out now from Four Way Books. McClain’s “Boy Pulling a Thorn from His Foot,” was published in Vol 62, issue 2. Tawanda Mulalu’s debut poetry collection, Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die: Poems is out now from Princeton University Press. Mulalu’s poem “all . . .
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Author Photo by Andrea D’Agosto In the whale’s spout, a rainbow.In my daughter’s hair, a rainbow hairtie.In the holy, holy. Holy, holy.In a diamond’s carbon-shape angles.In each eye, a stone reflected,a sore.—from “In Morning,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.When I was . . .
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I’ve always admired the way Alison C. Rollins’s poetry bridges urgency and experimentation. In her hands, objects from the archive are transformed into poetic vectors to imagine other worlds, other possibilities. I’ve also been following and admiring her recent experiments with creating physical objects from this poetic process. When we received her exquisite . . .
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When I was small likea selfish ideaI would pick pieces of his hairoff my smooth girl-bodyswollenin the dark placeswhere he had become light—from “Triptych,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.After a long hiatus from writing after high school, I took it up . . .
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