CategoryEssay

Will It Ever End?

by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer

In Essay, Narrative Non-Fiction

27 Min read

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It is a disorienting time to be gay in the world, in America. Rainbows and “love is love” in one realm, vicious hate coming from another. Some of us celebrate Gay Uncles Day on Facebook while, for others, calling queer people child molesters is a winning electoral strategy. Some of our families love and accept us, and many of our marriages may soon be invalidated in the states...

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The Embrace

by Christine Henneberg

In Essay, Opinion-Editorial

4 Min read

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The Roe v Wade decision represented something like the invention of the light bulb or of penicillin—a turning point after which the world was permanently, irrevocably changed for the better. Not that all women’s problems were solved, but we had secured something fundamental to the free existence that I took for granted—like the sticky-pink amoxicillin solution that I...

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As If We Lived There

By Bonnie Altucher

In Essay, Narrative Non-Fiction

6 Min read

A

Tears were a sexual thing. The wet light brimming beneath her long lashes made Rachel’s eyes more beautiful. I wanted her to cry, to make her despair by just kissing her, whispering in her licked ear. I closed my eyes, let my mouth travel down her solid body, following unreeling shapes in my mind, like the primitive landscapes on a radarscope.

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Where are the shots?

by Jon Roemer

In Essay

8 Min read

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Should this even be happening? Is this a gay thing? Would they have opened the doors at the Oakland Coliseum and flooded the place with vaccine if we were straight? How will this go when monkeypox spreads more widely, when more and more folks outside gay communities start posting pics of open lesions and weeping pox, with stories of unbearable pain, selfies of facial and private parts disfigured...

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The Hand Inside: Twelve Sure Signs we’re becoming puppets

by John Reed

In Essay, Facts & Dispatches

6 Min read

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Was Donald Trump a puppet president? Of Russia? Of some far-right conspiracy? Of his own ego? And what about the January 6 insurrectionists? More puppets? Puppets of a puppet? And Joe Biden? Good natured Joe? Standing there like a Sesame Street masterpiece? “The President.” Does he have the same handler as Kermit the Frog?

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UNNATURAL HISTORY OF CONSTRUCTION

by Ryan Alexander

In Criticism, Essay

23 Min read

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The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig

As a reader who has grown increasingly interested in a particular species of postwar fiction from the German-speaking countries—which traffics in introspection, anomie, and melancholy—to hear Wolfgang Hilbig referenced as part of a general literary/philosophical/intellectual cohort which included Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, and W.G...

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Berlin to Bavaria, or How I Joined the Bourgeoisie

By Leander Steinkopf

In Essay

13 Min read

B

I moved from Wedding to Schwabing, from Leopoldplatz in Berlin to Leopoldstrasse in Munich, from migrants and an enduring German underclass to posh Bavarians and global citizens. There is probably no starker contrast between any two German metropolitan districts. I offer just three examples: chilled drinks, dog poop, and street music.

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A Human Wrote this

by Jacqueline Feldman

In Essay

32 Min read

A

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When asked by the Guardian to take a stance on feminism, Siri said, “I believe that all voices are created equal and worth equal respect.” That, with a thoughtlessness worthy of any robot, is a play on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous line. But it is probably an improvement over what Siri used to say...

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Appendix (excerpt)

By Tyler C. Gore

In Essay, Narrative Non-Fiction

9 Min read

A

Now, I don’t want to get carried away. Pay attention, kids. Some parental fears really are based in the empirical universe. You really shouldn’t run with scissors, or climb into unmarked vans driven by strangers, and acute appendicitis really is more likely to occur in children than adults, and that is exactly why whenever you had a pain in your side...

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Is Poetry a Job, Is a Poem a Product

In Essay

7 Min read

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By Murat Nemet-Nejat

In plain English, the question of class has to do with money. Who gets paid what for what labor. In that respect, the poet belongs to the bottom of the economic totem pole. Each poet can do his or her tallying. Do you believe that you get a penny an hour for the numbers of hours you spend producing your poems?

In classical Marxism, income...

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The Names on the Stairs

In Essay, Fiction

17 Min read

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By Burhan Sönmez

Birth. They called him “Tahir.” That was the name of his parents’ relative Uncle Tahir. To tell the truth, everyone in the village was related. After that day Uncle Tahir lived for another twenty years, until he collapsed to the ground during the harvest.

At the age of 3 days. They called him “Burhan.” At his...

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In the Time of “In the Time of”

In Essay

40 Min read

I

Joseph Salvatore

An Auto-fictive Study of the Sociocultural Influence of Nostalgia/Sentimentality and Despair/Denial on the Development and Acceptance of Linguistic and Metalinguistic Responses to Trauma vis-à-vis the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020

Abstract

The terms nostalgia / sentimentality / despair / denial...

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