I have a hostage code, a panic button, motion detectors, sensors
The dryer has run all day, I can’t find my checkbook
The new light bulbs (so I am told) will last forever
“If only.” Said only if a mixed-media retrospect
is also being salvaged, the herringbone chevron
a swimmer inscribes on the mirroring lake.
Not the worst of all chauvinist prigs, I’ll concede, he seemed affronted by the wrongs my little handful of words and lines had done him, their very innocence, their youthfulness, rebuking him. The Pretty Child Can’t Write, She Shouldn’t, She Mustn’t, She Dare Not, She Will Not, The Skinny Co-ed Won’t Write, he seemed to pledge to himself as he drew forth my packet of fledgling verse and...
When I think about the famous crazy writers, I suspect that they didn’t start off crazy. They were very sane to stand as much of it as they did for as long as they did. It is where all the best work comes from.
As she attempts to trace the increasingly portentous-seeming name in her grandfather’s WWI journal chronicling his time digging trenches in France, the narrator of Forgotten Night is haunted by the absence of Jewish life in the villages she travels through, by the desolation of the scattered traces remaining.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen once said, “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” One half of Pam Jones’s newest novel The Arizona Room (Spaceboy Books, 2023) takes place during the World War II; in the second half, its protagonist reconciles with her experience in old age. While we never find ourselves...
I can’t write in an authentic voice if I get in my own way, if my own feelings are there, lurking. I have to disappear, not only for the reader, but for myself, and this art of deliberate, practiced self-annihilation gives me the purest, most exhilarating pleasure I’ve ever known.
Research suggests that reading literature improves theory of mind because it provides a complex look into the lives of people whose circumstances, experiences, and histories are different from our own. Does an improved theory of mind result in selfless behavior? No. If it did, we wouldn’t have literary writers, professors, and readers who are assholes, but we do.
Rodolfo had until then been listening rather distractedly to his elder companion’s lengthy narrative, since the steppe was filled with the scent-portraits of a great many hares, among which there arose suddenly the image of a great bustard, inscribed vividly in three scents, in concrete and relief, like a mezzotint; and there was not a square meter of ground that was not decorated with the tender...
Biblical imagery is a recurring motif, as evidenced by some of the story titles: “I John 3:15,” one of the shortest and darkest stories in the book (it still gives me shudders, just thinking about it), and “Sins of Our Fathers, Who Aren’t in Heaven.” Dealing with distant fathers and other family members is definitely something gay men can relate to, but it’s also a universal theme.
Poverty invites illness. Growing up, I saw many people afflicted by sickness that kept them homebound, or only able to work between bouts of physical symptoms. We are all somewhat powerless when sickness strikes or an accident occurs. What do poor people, including those who work low-paying jobs, do in such situations?
The system is built to fail a lot of us. It made me feel better about the fact that these women felt connected to somebody else like me when I thought I was completely alone in this scenario. It turns out I’m not.
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