Natural disasters happening around the country this week includea hurricane off the east coast and historic wildfires in the west.JEEZ. And then it’s back to contemplating joint tape, joint compound,and paint, so we can get out of town for one more “

a golden shovel after Richard Wright To realize a girl blossoming is to figure purpleas disquiet. A flower forgotten (even an artichoke)if only to safekeep. In time, the daughter becomes agranddaughter budding in the darkof the mind’s cupboard. a gol

1. “Are you by your machine?” he says. “Yeah, I’m here.” I turn the phone on speaker, set it on my desk, open a Word doc. By “machine”—I know by now—he just means computer. I don’t think I ever hear him say that word: Computer. I know he did, once, w

Qui tacet consentire videtur. Silence gives consent.Veritas odium parit. Truth creates hatred. You know how you can know some thingsbut forget you know until it’s time to remember.Mom met her third husband Billy whenshe was a teacher helping convicts

i. We ride horses in the slowly-falling snowand you tell me it is Summer, it is warm,and I don’t quite believe you, but I love you,so I go along with the oddly humorous deception. My mother says “Love is blind”and “Hindsight is 20/20,” but it doesn’t

I waited forever for my parents to die so I could say at least one true thingbut mean. And so I wouldn’t die myself with those two unaccounted for in a Hades of voles and worse. The die-hards that they were? I wanted to say it.The riot of horror and

As part of her signature project, You Are Here, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The volume was published by Milkweed Editions in April 2024. O

Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities

In the middleof spring, in the centerof the thicketa family of finches are making a slogof dinner, wormsthat, pulled outof the ground become somethinglike an elegiacwitness to hunger,the birds’ hunger, the thicket’s starvation,the yellowed grass’sthi

A hologram of a horse galloping makes me anxious.It can’t stop going nowhere.How can I walk past it? We are late,led through the sexesto a quiet courtyard where I see a babycarriage, not the baby.Nobody cries for me at Horses.We are seated between tw

Did you wait for mein the riverbed, undera smooth stone?Did I have to earn you,like a Chicago summer?A seed sproutingin harsh conditions?Stand in a long linefull of crossed fingers,all the whileyou lit up the marquee.Can I keep you?When they callyou,

when white supremacistsproudly enunciate murderwith the hard R like a butcherknife splitting crosshairsbetween palatable resistanceand acquiescent silent gesturesor maybe i should askwhen we stopped believingin tomorrow’s ability to bloomfrom the pal

We wish to express our gratitude to everyone who donated to the 2023–2024 Friends Campaign and our thanks to the following individuals for their particularly generous contributions. Dana AsherMargot Berg and Robert EpsteinJonathan KatzWilliam Kistler

It was deep summer. The grasseswere all golden. Amber balesof hay, rolled tight as cinnamon buns, lay dottedaround a lone field oak, with horsesgrazing between. Years later, after we were married, after the birthof our son, the deathof our daughter,

Even songbirds learn to singThey listen to their fathers We babble our way to syntaxWe listen to our mothers Oh, said my mother, my first word Without a father, an isolate songWithout a mother … When I took him to watch the planesthe orphan boy said

1 Elizabeth’s favorite pastime is gathering flowers along country lanesso our drive progresses slowly, pulling over at ditchesand churchyards to collect what she desires on a grey afternoon. No blossoms as beautiful here as in West Corkbut the place

Sometimes driving, you see a dead animal in a roadside heap of its own wreckage, but it’s just a shredded truck tire turned back on itself in a kind of visual agony. That’s a common mistake, though who talks about it? My wife does. Usually a deer or

Outside, a thunderstorm. Ice water and ice cream. Our 15-yurt commune is dissolving into acrimony and acorn flour. My dog was sent to a canine inn whose sign flashes neon purple, All Dogs Welcome. He is a 160-pound dingo, so they might kick him to th

If the day is not in it—some bitof its weather, its key, as toldby the ginkgo leaves. The weatherholds time, exquisite information. Life is not a dream like a scenein a novel I’ll never forget. I mean,it happened to me, and I will forget.It’s that ki

waking up in the bodyin early spring, being touchedby the first signs of daylight,the sounds of leaf blowers & birds,a distant airplane, people speakingnear the yard, in the garden— my house is out of eggs,so i quickly toast a bagel,leave my dishes i

Editor Elizabeth Scanlon Business Manager Mike Duffy Editorial Assistants Thalia Geiger Hannah Gellman General Counsel Dennis J. Brennan, Esq. Contributing Editors Christopher Buckley, Deborah Burnham, Jan Freeman, Leonard Gontarek, Everett Hoagland,

She came in // about one pm // on a Monday // she had a gun //In math class //they got the memo //Lockdown is a scary word //only if you’ve neverdone it //I ask them what it meant //a “lock-and-teach” //they saidjust that //but there’s another classi

Today the sky the samecolorless grey as rocksalt, truck-scattered overFulton Street. Trees leafless darkershades of bark. I walk. CrossDeKalb to the hospitalwhere people wait& wait. Lines to get shots. A blanknessfills the air bundledlike a quilt of

For some reason, the primordial flaring forth of everything.For no reason, a microcosmic grain and then a billion galaxies. Lightning made greenAcross this just-so planet. Across a continuous tightrope between scatter and collapseAlong a curvature, a

—Damien Hirst; Tiger shark, glass, steel, 5% formaldehyde solution; 1991 What we did not expect to find were my father’ssecret poems, saved deep in his computer’s memory.Writing, he wrote, is like painting a picturein someone else’s mind. He develope

There is a mark on the retinaI’m told I must watch, twice the optic nerve. I blink& see the dark side of a moon dissolving into the worldits shadow obscures, a dead star. If I close the lid the moon burnsbrighter, flipped now, as if lit from beyond,

Editor Elizabeth Scanlon Business Manager Mike Duffy Editorial Assistants Thalia Geiger Hannah Gellman General Counsel Dennis J. Brennan, Esq. Contributing Editors Christopher Buckley, Deborah Burnham, George Economou, Jan Freeman, Leonard Gontarek,

I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc