“Ghosts stories/told around the campfire/predicted my future.” (Poetry)
Perhaps they found another way. Perhaps they could stop. Perhaps they just go to church. What I wouldn’t give to possess their simple freedoms. (Nonfiction)
Our government only practices against a sunset bleeding into the cradle of tactile landing. (Poetry)
“merely archaeological, the images of strewn masks take on a symbolic meaning for America’s ambivalence towards public health.” (The Loop)
“the city’s landmarks/are illuminated/by your stopover in my thoughts” (TCTC Translations)
“I pledge allegiance to no man,/ let alone some fucking flag” (Poetry)
We’re whiter and more rural which means we don’t pick the president—we just narrow the view. (Poetry)
CONTENT WARNING: This play contains discussion about suicide.
Can’t lie to anyone here. Prophets—all of us. Could baptize any guy with your spit. (Drama)
“Eyes reflect the distortions/of a whitewashed mind.” (Poetry)
“The footbridge is missing a plank./He has frayed the regard of everybody he knows.” (Poetry)
“Haranguing shots, agony, careening/blue lights stir fever in a dark bedroom.” (Poetry)
Many are drawn to martins covered with feathers that seem to absorb ash, stained with orange glass shards. (Translations)
You spend the winter telling me it’s almost summer. (Nonfiction)
CONTENT WARNING: This short story contains discussion about suicidal events and ideation. (Fiction)
If countries were people, we wouldn’t invite them to our parties because they are too monstrous, Robin Hemley tells Julia Lieblich.
“Apparently to be a poet—dogmatic on the outside/and lacking conviction within//is a hell one can leave/but doesn’t” (Translations)
Donald Ray Pollock’s Hillbilly Gothic peels back the sanitized “heartland” image of the Midwest, revealing the often-overlooked rural people. An interview by Jarrett Kaufman.
Every book, like every child, stems from multiple ancestral lines. Fruitful books sprout new lines, branching into new familial territories, writes Amy Hassinger. (Reviews)
I’ve socialized a couple times in the backyard. Masks on, masks off, nibble, nibble, sip, sip, masks on, masks off, sip, sip, nibble, nibble. (Nonfiction)
You’re going to call me racist with the name, Bianka? “White?” “Fair?”
“God’s Promise…” (Drama)
My friend was talking to her brother on Skype when a mouse–
“I wanted to shout, but my tongue felt like the army slept on it. I wish I had a bittersweet Lick-M-Aid.” (Fiction)
“but the sea swoons/with delight in holy purity/but sand breaks the stone/that covers my face” (Translations)
Whilst searching through an unfamiliar room,/the guest against the bedstead sets abloom./A blemished bruise that raise on his shank pain’s gloom.” (Poetry)
Lexie Pitter is a newfound activist, bringing police brutality protests to Chicago’s North Side, where residents perceive police as benign protectors, as opposed to threats to the innocent. An interview by Avani Kalra.
everything we could stand to lose to the devil/
“I’m a big fan of letting people enjoy things,” a Twitter user named Sherryis washingherhands…
“Stories of immigration, grieving, displacement, disaster, and language itself explode in this debut by Chicago-based writer Michael Zapata.” An interview by Samuel Schwindt.
I’ve never liked American reality TV because there’s so much hyperbole, yelling and arguing that reminds me of my childhood, that cramped home, the screaming matches, the constant fighting over money. (Fiction)
This is the day I am told I’m not essential. “I am too,” I say.
Moving beaters hacked and coughed like emphysema patients. (Fiction)
The space between the woman and the art flattened until she felt she was the art. (Fiction)
I had to be in lockdown with a soon-to-be-ex-husband.
A trifecta of trilliums, a triplicity of trilliums.
(Nonfiction)
Oh, food. It is such a deft [and daft] distraction. It absolutely changes the narrative.
Nowhere in the Five Big Ones does it say we have to be well read. Which is good. (Drama)
A response to some of the fun and humor and movement of the poem. (Translations)
Hunter said she aims to “visually discuss law and society in slavery and racism through physical spaces.”
What does it mean when most of your countrymen live in Moscow or Los Angeles? (Fiction)
Once, existence was on/full speed, catching rumors.
(Nonfiction) We don’t know names, on our street.
his desire heated to almost a reckoning, and I
I waited for a stimulus check that I doubted would come.
“The White Envelope (1975)” by Catherine Cusset, translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
All night long, Elena tossed and turned on her thin mattress and listened to…the coughs, the laughs, the sobs, and the whispers of all these poor people who had the same hopes as they did.
I’d sip on my coffee while showing off my fishnet thigh-highs.
There is a small Italian restaurant two blocks from my house in Inner N.E. Portland. It’s been there for decades.
