Paati lived at the edge of a minor fishing village, in a small gray house darkened by caliginous algae stains that streamed down its outer walls and along the edges of its clay roof tiles. She was their mother’s mother, a stern woman, darker than their mother, with a nose curved and . . .
Read More
My mother taught me that music can mean different things each time it is listened to. Sometimes a piece means all the same things it has meant before, but not always. It changes, she told me, depending on where you are in life. “Music is a journey,” she said. “There is a . . .
Read More
To find a missing friend, follow the rot. When/IfYou find herHimThem Whatever they have become Crouch over the body like an old woman.—from “Learning to Eat the Dead: Juba” in Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.What comes to mind is “What Is . . .
Read More
If I had really good eyes, I might see the threads that join me to the crowd, or even to one old man, this fellow next to me, for example, his cheeks as flush as a Christmas card Santa, his eyes moist, his hand over his heart as he gazes at the . . .
Read More
You know the greatest myth? ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall.’ World’s biggest hoax. Yes or no? Because the mirror never says: ‘You, my queen! You are the fairest of them all. —from “Mallika Reflects on the Events of Discount Monday,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019) Tell us about one of the . . .
Read More
When Courtney suggested over late-night tacos that we just go there, go to Standing Rock to stand with the water protectors and help out however we might, I had that dizzy recognition that this was actually something that we could do, and that I was scared to do it, but that I . . .
Read More
(Photo: Nicoletta Dosio, ANSA) Editor’s note: Shortly after New Year’s Day, Erri De Luca published a poem dedicated to Nicoletta Dosio. On December 30, 2019, Nicoletta Dosio, the seventy-three year-old ex-schoolteacher and activist from Bussoleno in Italy’s Susa Valley, was sent to prison by the Italian state. Dosio is a leading figure . . .
Read More
In the heat, on the hardwood floor, I lay naked with an electric fan blowing hair in my mouth and my wolfdog drooling on my thigh.—from “Love, or Grieving a Beast,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.The first piece I wrote was . . .
Read More
Most great American train songs are really about people. But Walt Whitman’s “To a Locomotive in Winter” and Emily Dickinson’s “I like to see it lap the miles” are machinist at heart. They don’t depict engineers, stokers, and passengers. They don’t take you home, and they won’t bring your baby back. Dickinson’s . . .
Read More
My husband swelters, fevered to a mercurial pitch,thundering from the raw ribcage of our bedroom. Where have I taken him to? To my ancestralhome, a country a point of reentry for us both.He, however, stands tall in these parts. From afar I’d spot him in thick crowds: a small volcanicisland lapped by . . .
Read More