The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
After descending into the basement, you act as if you never went, as if you have no idea what the basement really is or what happened there. Even though you left the girl you once were in the basement, you spent the rest of your nights pretending it didn’t happen.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
He had written DECEASED next to my mother’s name on his return. That threw the whole system off, sending his return into the void for further review. Since the entire IRS was working from home due to Covid-19, which arrived approximately two weeks after my mother’s death, apparently every day was now Leap Day, and perhaps in another four years my father might get his refund.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
I walk across the highway to the other side, lean over the same crumbling concrete guardrail and look down into the stagnant cesspool. As I slowly raise my head, I follow the canal as it extends in a straight line out to Lake Michigan. The huge, shadowy metal structures of the steel makers stand along the shore, and next to them, barely visible, a towering crane.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Every night I read
My country’s history
of profit wrung from working people
and before dawn I burn my shoes
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Blair emerged otherworldly in his cloud of sawdust,
but wheezing and sucking for air. Over his head,
centerfold pin ups in every garage door panel
were framed by black tape. They hovered like angels.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
A cloud spills grey
oil over their guns
They aim at a wolf
who, a second ago,
was someone’s son.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Unlike dementia, infant loss doesn’t induce a lingering forgetfulness. The pain of the birth, the fear of seeing Sophia’s tiny red body, the way her skin tore as she rolled on my chest, the slowing of her chest rising and falling, the doctor calling her time of death—remembering it all again was torture.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
No wonder Mr. Barde is struggling to fall asleep, considering his job where hypertension goes without saying. So, he suffers patiently, reads until impossible hours, and sometimes plays at cultivating insomnia, gaining thus beaches of meditation, wanderings in thought fostered by silence.
(translations)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Though I have only recently revealed myself to him, Eddie identifies me as the culprit, which kicks off a harangue: How could you do it? Why? Why? Why? and the like, all vocalized aloud.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
For decades, Bubbie avoided mentioning the war. Her close friends were refugees and survivors, already well acquainted with tragedy. They all had their own stories of loss and suffering, and no one wanted another.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
exhausted like a French arthouse film
there’s always a male and female lead
reuniting for us
(TCTC translations/poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
America didn’t go as well for Avreml as he had imagined. The assimilation process was hard for him, and it was difficult to feel at home in the big city of New York.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
I understand intimately how our society makes demands of women and creates the conditions that make it impossible to meet them. Being seen as a woman has been more of an annoyance than suffocation—until I became pregnant.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
We are perhaps most free when we’re standing in front of an imposing wall, naming a roadblock to our own (or to our neighbor’s) full humanity and then throwing ourselves against that obstacle.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
how anne frank would’ve been a belieber
& ur body beneath all those clothes
the color of my skin being important
to everyone but me
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Tamil and English and a love of Jesus, porumaiyin sikaram, the pinnacle of patience, were drilled into them.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
But in 1961, basketball coaches had yet to become gods. His office was only a little larger than a janitor’s closet.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Like a twig afloat on a sea of dirty towels, the feeling inside me, laid out on the countertop of my soul, filleted and sweating in the humid air. And yet, wonder eludes the twirling gearhulk of my heart.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Our Holocaust education had gone beyond the bounds of institutional sanction. We were now in uncharted waters.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
We each take what we can / from the angels that visit us.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
It is disrespectful to sleep over the stones / of the insane without dreaming our dreams.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
as if it matters / that you drowned in freshwater, tap water, or first / in yourself.
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Yesterday’s rosy cheeks we thought would stay. / Today our hair has turned more and still more gray.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I wish I could once again see / your benches where the weary come to sit / and watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“For once, I don’t want to call love a feral cat; / I want to forgive myself the way water / forgives everything.”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“In the end when they ask would I do it again // I’ll shake my head: where does one draft / end and another begin?”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“She washed her hair and chose the most suitable clothes her closet would allow, the kind of outfit she imagined the woman who headed up the office of human resources would want to see.”
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“But when Flora dried off, put on her housecoat and entered the bedroom, she was not prepared for what she saw.”
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“an archipelago: / a chain of islands / and also, / what contains them”
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“And what if dying is like / that time I got out of school early / because I had an appointment”
Another Chicago Magazine 