I didn’t know many people who had gone to university. Neither Dad, nor Mom, nor my grandparents went. Still I knew more or less how university types dressed and even how they spoke, partly because my cousin was a veterinary student (though I barely saw him, and until he finally graduated, I . . .
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A Review of Hank Drossel’s Item: Regarding the Basilisk. SYOM Press, 2022. ix+187 pp. Hank Drossel worked for decades as the travel agent and logistics manager for various arts institutions, especially music ensembles. From a perch at Eastern Airlines, he supported Cold War-era “hearts and minds” tours: avant-garde artists and groups performing American . . .
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They came to meet him at the tiny airport in the town where he had attended medical college. As he went from his new house in Texas to the airport to New York and then London and Delhi, he had the sensation that the world was growing bigger and bigger. But on . . .
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It wasn’t my choice to leave Odesa. My father decided, my mother agreed, and so it happened. In 1976. We were lucky to get out, lucky to avoid the fates of refuseniks and political prisoners in the Gulag, lucky that my father—who lost his job immediately upon applying for an exit visa—did . . .
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We knew our answers, but they weren’t what you were looking for: What do you want to be when you grow up? Not married.A man with stronger arms than mine.A person with the courage to bite down.An evil queen.A horse.—from “Please Don’t Ask Us,” Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022) Tell us . . .
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On March 26, 2022, MR joined Paperbark for a reading at the Augusta Savage Gallery, as part of The Future is Now—Art. Sustainability. Activism. To purchase a copy of the CLIMATE issue of MR, click here. “The UMass Fine Arts Center, the MFA for Poets and Writers, and the School of Earth and Sustainability, are working to create deliberate opportunities . . .
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S.L.Cassar, Smyrna after the Great Fire. 1922. Public Domain. The centennial of the Great Fire of Smyrna is in 2022. “Today [Monday, 11 September 1922] I saw with my own eyes the Turks taking bombs, gunpowder, kerosene and everything necessary to start fires, in wagonfuls here and there through the streets,” the . . .
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Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, late September 2002. A beautiful fall morning. What was once called an Indian summer, but Jacob is learning to expunge such phrases from his lexicon: Indian summer. Dutch treat, French kiss. Is French kiss okay? Not that it matters; he hasn’t French kissed a guy in months.—from “Simple Past . . .
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There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.—Wallace Stevens, “Fabliau of Florida” As Spring breakers, vacationers, snowbirdsHit the beaches of Florida, these wordsIn my limericks hereAre to recommend beersFor your forthcoming excursions seaward. From the Gulf and Atlantic-side makersOf craft brews that pair well with breakers(And the sunshine and . . .
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The day I arrived on the butter schooner a cow had fallen off the cliff. Its carcass was found on the beach in the cove below, near the high tide line, by some men waiting to load the hogs and butter onto the boat for the return trip to San Francisco. Everyone . . .
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