* Kevin Haworth*
Maybe what we sometimes call unreliable narration is not deception—but rather a person expressing two truths, albeit ones that exist uneasily in the same space. Pleasure and longing. A desperate feeling that pulls in two directions at once.
A Museum, A Girl, A Statement Read More »
* Paula Mendoza*
I read this Salon article about GenXers and mid-life crises which hones in on a few particulars of one generation’s anxiety about growing old. Author of the article, Sarah Scribner, citing economist and demographer Neil Howe, spoke of how the Boomer generation’s mid-life crisis was marked by a kind of claustrophobia over the constrictions of family and career, whereas with GenXers, the opposite fear prevails—an agoraphobia that paralyzes with seemingly infinite choices and options…I’d like to speak to what Scribner calls a ‘survivalist’ tendency in this demographic—that quality of enterprising restlessness, fashioned by economic crises, war, and two terms of a Bush presidency.
On Cynicism and Celebrating An Imbecility Read More »
* Claire Skinner *
Some days, the best of intentions fly out the window, and all I want to do is drink a buttery glass or two of white wine, stream episodes of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix, and take a long, luxurious nap. Who cares if it’s a Tuesday? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to listen to the part of myself that is calling out for rest, for a day on the sofa in pajamas. I’ve decided to roll with these, to quote Pilgrim’s Progress, “Sloughs of Despond,” without (too much) self-judgment. Forget the gym. Forget returning emails with any semblance of timeliness. Forget the dishes waiting patiently in the sink. Forget it. Today I’m slothful, morose, and sleepy.
Since I’m of the literary persuasion, on days like this I need a poem that understands my predicament, that wallows with me, that raises its glass. Cheers.
* Zhanna Vaynberg *
Central Siberia has forty words for snow-like weather, and in the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, there are about seventy terms for ice: “utuqaq,” ice that lasts year after year; “siguliaksraq,” the patchwork layer of ice crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and “auniq,” ice that is filled with holes, like Swiss cheese. Replace the word ‘ice’ with ‘love’ and it makes perfect sense to adopt these words as our own! They’d be much more accurate than the very general term “love.”
Do Like the Inupiaq Read More »
Anti-Polish sentiment is so pervasive that even Poles I meet in Warsaw often ask me, somewhat suspiciously—perhaps rightly so—and somewhat incredulously—the part that troubles me—why I came here.
Warsaw Dispatch: What’s In a Joke? Read More »
* Mary Camille Beckman *
Just like my first summer in the Midwest, this year it’s been relentlessly hot, surprisingly humid, and in my apartment, ever un-air conditioned. In July, I stripped my bed of its quilt and sheets, placed a fan in front of every window, almost cracked a tooth chewing ice. My cat has been nibbling on her Tender Vittles only infrequently, yawning often, and shedding continuously. She stretches out day and night on the cool tiles between the toilet and the shower. I’ve been eating mango popsicles for dinner. This kind of heat—the kind that makes most movement absurd or impossible, robs you of your appetite, colors everything bright, wilts people and plants alike—is the subject of Florine Stettheimer’s 1919 painting titled, you guessed it, Heat.
A Painting for Late Summer: Florine Stettheimer’s Heat Read More »
* Eric McDowell *
Listening to Sonny Clark’s “Cool Struttin’” not long ago, I asked my musician friend how to know if Jackie McClean’s solo (or any saxophone solo) was good or not. He drew a slow breath—deciding how far back toward the basics of theory he’d have to meet me?—and said, “Well, do you like it?” He didn’t elaborate. When I tried to answer his question, I realized I couldn’t. Yes, I’d wanted to like jazz, wanted to be “into it” and to know how to talk about it even. But for some reason I’d passed over that simplest, most obvious and essential approach: I hadn’t been listening, not really. What I mean is, I had put the cart before the horse, wanting to know what I should like without considering what I did like.
Do You Like It?: Headroom and Jazz Drumming Read More »
* A.L. Major *
In sophomore year of college, I tell my writing mentor I don’t know if I can write stories from the Bahamian perspective. I tell him, “I don’t trust myself to get the voices right.” He asks me what a Bahamian voice sounds like? A black voice? Aren’t you Bahamian? “I am,” I stutter. “I am Bahamian.”
Inconsistent Voices Read More »
* Claire Skinner *
I’m writing to you from the public library in Pahrump, Nevada. We’re here for the free Wi-Fi. Outside, the Spring Mountains rise jaggedly to the east. A few bedraggled clouds, ripped apart by wind, speed over the peaks. Inside, senior citizens stare suspiciously at laptop computers as if they will explode. Occasionally, they type, bird-like. I’m suspicious, too, but for other reasons. This town, like so many Nevada towns, is strange and inscrutable. There’s a man who’s lived in Pahrump as long as anybody can remember, who walks up and down the main drag, waving his huge, bright American flag at the passing cars. There are two legal brothels here—Sheri’s Ranch and Chicken Ranch—and numberless slot machines. A big Wal-Mart. I can’t say I recommend it. Which is saying something, coming from me: I love a dive desert town. I don’t love Pahrump.
Postcards from the Desert Read More »
To travel in linguistic isolation is not to live between cultures but to live in parallel to the current culture as an observer and sometimes a participant whose actions are determined and informed by wholly foreign terms.
Warsaw Dispatch: Where Benches Play Chopin Read More »
