Congo: Curriculum Vitae (excerpt) Congo: Curriculum Vitae (excerpt)
[When one of us goes] When one of us goes to the other world, we gather and weep so that the ocean of our tears may take the deceased to their final resting place. [The path of lif…
Dec 13, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Alain Mabanckou
A Suit or a Suitcase A Suit or a Suitcase
You ask what I’ll miss about this life. Everything but cruelty, I think. But you want one specific thing, so here—I’ll miss my body. I’ll miss its companionship, how it’s tr…
Nov 23, 2022 / Poems / Maggie Smith
The Average Driver Will Be in a Car Accident Once Every Eighteen Years The Average Driver Will Be in a Car Accident Once Every Eighteen Years
Moonship comes when I’m on the road, A/C on, music on, the inside still in, then—zam—wind, unshielded crescents of moon, the body gone, tearing through space at 60 miles per…
Nov 17, 2022 / Poems / Nomi Stone
The Limits of Language The Limits of Language
it was something about the bounce in my step, in the rippling jiggle of my belly & breasts, something about the periwinkle painted pinkies, the purple pointers, the chipping it…
Nov 15, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Aerik Francis
Kehua / I used to want to be the bait that caught Te Ika Kehua / I used to want to be the bait that caught Te Ika
I lost my nerve for spirits when I was sixteen. Spent that whole spring playing chicken and betraying my grandparents’ liquor cabinets for homies who were too cool to say th…
Nov 10, 2022 / Poems / Tayi Tibble
Mama I Am Sorry Mama I Am Sorry
For the stillbirth and the live ones. For my books, degrees, and all the other1 ways I have betrayed you. For unlinking our arms a dozen times the year before2 your surgery, unconv…
Nov 1, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Cindy Juyoung Ok
First Foray Into Apophatic Theology First Foray Into Apophatic Theology
and then God is not like the sound the kindling makes as it meets the matchhead, not like the buoy in the bay invisible at night, not like the gravity calling to the pear on the bo…
Nov 1, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Matthew Olzammn
the impact of foreign bodies; the earth collapsing the impact of foreign bodies; the earth collapsing
A shadow bisects another, which is to say it enlarges itself The body doubles what it cannot hold I turned on the TV to drown out my heartbeat This hefty crime: to obscure a…
Oct 27, 2022 / Poems / Jennifer S. Cheng
Windbreak Windbreak
In hurricane season the old trees suffer. Especially the ones standing alone. Their roots no match for a summer wind churning at sea, inhaling slights and salt air, then rus…
Oct 13, 2022 / Poems / John Freeman