Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
New York Times, October 24, 2019 LONDON —The 39 people found dead in a refrigerated truck trailer in southeastern England . . . . We don’t know much. The authorities said they were Chinese. Later, police said they were from a village in Vietnam. Probably seeking work in factories or construction or nail salons in Britain. We don’t know much but I…
Corn chips, on the cob, in a can, the mash-bill of his bourbon he was expecting, even the feed of cows turned steak, hamburger he ate no second thought, but then his soda, ketchup (all his condiments), and the cough syrup, taking it all down, a cornbread brain, his bones pureed, the once-detested creamed corn simmered, reduced to weight- bearing—kernels the new hemoglobin tumbling through…
People don’t grow up the way they used to. By which I mean— sometimes I store trash in the freezer to make it to garbage day. I harness the cold to disinfect my jeans. My friend lives in a garage with the landlord’s freezer. Some days, she practices sticking her head in a kitchen appliance, but gets too cold and has to stop. Rent includes…
This fall, we’re asking you to make a choice: Truth or Dare? We want to see work that deals with truth – uncovering it, hiding it, coming to a personal truth, living your truth, or work that delivers us the truths you’ve discovered about life. OR We dare you to send us your most daring work. Daring in form, content, subject, or execution. If you’re…
In Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire (2019), Mahit, a young ambassador from an insignificant space station, arrives at the city of Teixcalaan, the very centre of a rapacious space empire. She must carefully navigate the political minefield she inherited from a capricious predecessor who not only died under mysterious circumstances in a foreign land, but in doing sodeprived Mahit of access to his precious…