After a moment of ‘studying,’ Horsecollar said, “That’s a mighty iffy saying of Lincoln’s, but it makes a lot of sense.” He slightly nodded, but I wasn’t at all sure we understood one another.
(fiction)
Tag: acm
I didn’t used to tell the ski jumpers about the time they have to endure at the top, but in the more than thirty years I’ve worked at the Lake Placid Olympic Jumping Complex—meeting the competitors at the base of the K-120 long jump and directing them to the start—I’ve come to realize that it’s better to get this information on the table immediately. Otherwise, they grow restless. We all do. And that’s when the real accidents happen.
(fiction)
“In this breathtaking book, Tim Mackintosh-Smith takes us through 3,000 years of Arab history. The unifier is not, as one might guess, Islam,” Richard Wirick writes in his book review.
(review)
I asked why I was being taken aside. A woman in uniform and gloves told me I had to be screened for bomb paraphernalia.
“Do you speak English?” she asked me. This was after I had asked her why I was being taken aside, in perfect English.
(nonfiction)
I can’t conceptualize the poverty. None of us can. How do you make something of yourself in a new country when you came here with nothing?? When you’ve been starving for years in your own country and come here to a land with so much food, so much sweet smelling, fattening, beautiful food . . . and you with no money to buy it.
(nonfiction)
“Bey’s examination points to the long history of racism, classism, and economics that have ingloriously combined to create the particular set of circumstances that give rise to contradictions,” reviewer Philip Berger notes.
(review)
I glare at the construction crews. I search for where they’ve hidden the dynamite. They don’t know that I’m in the warehouse. I keep myself hidden. I’d like to sneak in and light it off, watch the fireworks. I imagine Rowan watching, too, knowing that it’s me.
(fiction)
Imprisoned behind glass in New York City’s Jewish Museum: a sinister grin in graphite. Too big-teeth and hairy brows crowned with a jester’s coxcomb. “I wanted something visually exciting,” Jerry Robinson said of his concept sketch of The Joker. “I wanted something that would make an indelible impression, would be bizarre, would be memorable.”
(nonfiction)
“Pynchon is like the lost minutes on the Nixon tapes,” Steele says. “The not being there just adds to the mystery. The fact he even came today ruins it. Like if the Red Sox won the World Series. The myth is dead. The real Pynchon would’ve never showed. I think it was a dumb move, actually.”
(fiction)
Solve this problem: Your daughter’s playing with a doll, a gift she just received from a friend. The doll is white.1968: John Carlos gives the black power salute Arthur Ashe wins the first US Open. 1970: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye the problem of “whiteness” as a standard of beauty Arthur Ashe wins the Australian Open. 1972: Bettye Saar The Liberation of Aunt Jemima 1975 the liberation continues Arthur Ashe outthinks Connors to win Wimbledon “no matter what I do, or where or when I do it, I feel the eyes of others watching me, judging me.”
(nonfiction)
“The Paris of the Americas”
“Obligatorium”
“Monsoon Season: Morenci AZ”
“Plucked”
“Memory as Diary”
It all seemed too much to successfully handle, but there was nothing else to do.
(nonfiction)
Ruth couldn’t quite forget that her husband, David, had slept with Diana before he slept…
It isn’t genteel to point out, but spit can be beautiful. It’s an ordinary beauty—the parabola, the clearly practiced skill.
(nonfiction)
“Free Solo Climbing”
“A Beautiful Fiasco”
(fiction)
There’s a telephone. Three syllables, telephone, so it’s the kind with the handle—you could bring it from room to room only with the help of long cords, like a medical attachment of saline. Its speaking and listening parts imitated your own. Meeting in a kind of lonely kiss: plastic, teeth, cartilage, bone.
(nonfiction)
“Black people often comment on the fact that when you see some person’s name trending on Twitter among your circles, someone Black who you’ve never heard of, your first thought is, ‘My God, someone has been murdered again,'” Eve Ewing tells ACM poetry editor Tara Betts.
Another Chicago Magazine 