The jar looks to be full of swamp water. Its contents swirl and leave grit on the glass when you turn it over in your hands. “Duck blood soup,” explains your mother. “Czernina.” It always…
Posts tagged Nonfiction
Call for Submissions: Shadow Play and Light Work
There is a term in visual art called chiaroscuro, which, in Italian, can translate to a compound phrase: lightdark. In this year’s series for Portland Review, two of the oldest artistic tropes— shadow and light—meet…
Fifth Position: Unlocking Space
In the spring of 1983, Russian choreographer George Balanchine, at the age of seventy-nine, lay dying of a rare neurological disorder in Roosevelt Hospital. According to his biography by Bernard Taper, dancers from the New…
What Trees Mean to America
Please be advised that this comic includes depictions of self-harm. —The Editors