* fiction by Courtney Sender, excerpted from MQR 53:2, Spring 2014 * Look, the truth of the way of the world is that David loves Moira enough to move to the middle of Nothing, England, for her, and Moira doesn’t love David enough to pick up the goddamned phone.
All David wants to do is warn her:
“We Can Practice Starts,” by Courtney Sender Read More »
poetry by G. C. Waldrep, excerpted from MQR 53:2, Spring 2014
I came to love late,
as in a forest clearing
one walks at dusk
& spies, in the
needlemass, that
pale clump, un-
suspected, not there
just a few hours
before: indian pipe,
“Indian Pipe,” by G.C. Waldrep Read More »
And the old ones, the ones who were afraid, looked at each other and sat down, and cried. They threw up their hands. They said, You’re going to do it, anyway, aren’t you? And the new ones said, Yes. And the old ones said, All our work? And the new ones said, We’re sorry. And they all knelt down, and began to pull back the grass.
“Otherwise Known As: A Legend in Words & Pictures,” by Rachel May Read More »
* fiction by Amber Burke *
In the white bathroom light, she can see all the orange hairs poking out of her arms and her legs. She stares at the ring on her finger, the ring Bruce bought her last night on an installment plan, gold-gold with a fleck of diamond inside a flower shape.
“Jesus Christs Forever,” by Amber Burke Read More »
*poetry by Campbell McGrath* From curiosity comes dynamism, from obstinacy drive.
From the drawing board, from tinkering, from the machine shop in the old barn come pistons and cams.
“Henry Ford (1904),” by Campbell McGrath Read More »
It was the first two boys in the classroom at 8:25 who started tapping the glass of the cage. “Kirby’s dead!” one of them shouted—later she couldn’t remember who it was, though she was sure Michael Curtis had been in the class that year, and he’d have been the type to shout, the type for drama. “He’s like this,” Michael said, lolling his tongue out and choking himself.
“Dead Turtle,” by Rebecca Makkai Read More »
Theobald Kristeller settled into his chair in the early printed text room of the British Library. The reading area was deathly quiet, save when one of the youngish, gung-ho librarians stumbled upon someone not using one of the book cradles properly, or writing notes in pen. Theo had himself once been upbraided for letting a first edition of Robert Persons’s De Persecutione Anglicana slip into his lap. “But it’s Persons!” he had exclaimed incredulously. “No one cares about Robert Persons!”
“Sonnet 126,” by Doug Trevor Read More »
* fiction by Kelsey Ronan *
Behind her, Tianna laughs. “Listen to her,” she guffaws. She repeats “dark with anguishhh,” in her white girl voice, the words theatrically elongated. “Who you tryna be?” Tianna’s laughter ripples around the room. Monae turns quickly back and stares down at her desk. Her face burns. Miss McCorkle ineffectively repeats, “Students, students,” but all the eighth graders are so relieved to be pulled away from this impossible poem and given something familiar to ridicule that they laugh and laugh.
“The Fireside Poets,” by Kelsey Ronan Read More »
* fiction by Charles Baxter *
With a tiny advance from a publisher and a six-week deadline, she felt like a caged animal hopping on electrified grates for the occasional food pellet. Her professional reputation was at stake: after this volume was published, she would probably be held up to ridicule in the New York Review of Books for her translation of this very poem. She could already see the adverb-adjective clusters: “discouragingly inept,” “sadly inappropriate,” “amusingly tin-eared.” One of the few Americans who had any command of this dialect, she belonged to a tight little society full of backbiters.
“Forbearance,” by Charles Baxter Read More »
Holiness
is a word I love to hear,
it sounds like wings to me,
wings brushing the world, grazing my life.
“First Choral Ode of Bakkhai,” by Anne Carson Read More »
