In 1988, when I went to Uruguay for the first time, the country was emerging from a long military dictatorship, and the capital, Montevideo, was a quiet, gray city that reminded me of Central Europe. The arts have always been important in Uruguay. You feel their presence everywhere—from the striking modern architecture that invigorates the…
They come jittering into her life from the past,brunette like her mother, wiryand tense, wearing garments blackas anthracite chopped from the city’s heart.Complaint rises like music or smokepast the elegant lamps of their facesas they settle their fringe and nail polishonto our secondhand couch: men, mostly,but the theme could be anything,children, money, uterine cramping,low brilliant…
In poetry, our winner is Emily Jungmin Yoon for two poems entitled “An Ordinary Misfortune.” Matthew Lippman, the poetry judge, writes about the winning poems: “They continue to resonate long after my reading of them. I love the lyrical quality to the verse. I love how she speaks so powerfully about identity (historical and present)…
Nothing was foreshortened but love, those daysof the iced-over river and penniless Thursdays— Iowa, where the news finished with the lateston pork bellies. The paper was named the Press-Citizen, a contradiction in terms. We eyed the neighborswith their post-midnight record hop, Led Zeppelin blasting the arm’s-width of the alley.The injuries of our twenties were recut…
In poetry, our winner is Emily Jungmin Yoon for two poems entitled “An Ordinary Misfortune.” Matthew Lippman, the poetry judge, writes about the winning poems: “They continue to resonate long after my reading of them. I love the lyrical quality to the verse. I love how she speaks so powerfully about identity (historical and present)…
Everybody seems to be pointing things at one another these days.The cop with the radar gun pointed his radar gun at my carand my car pointed back, its rearview mirror,to give the policeman an idea of what hurt looks likeeven if you do deserve that ticket,going 90 in a school zone during drop-off.Problems point at…
When my grandmother pulled outthe wool suit I hated and told me to take a bath,I wondered just how long it would takebefore she told me that my father wasthe thing under the blue tarp in the wagonthe men brought up from the fields,but I watched her go to the mirror and comb outher long…
In fiction, our winner is Lucy Tan for her story “Safety of Numbers.” This year’s fiction judge, Megan Mayhew Bergman, writes: “‘Safety of Numbers’ stood out to me as a confident and ultimately believable piece of short fiction, one with solid, gimmick-free writing that took up space beyond its page count. There was a real…
Because the cemetery was having a BOGO sale(“buy one, get one”) and real estate dear, my mother bought my burial plot the yearI turned eleven and broke my leg and you appeared on the cover of Sports Illustratedin the platonic ideal of a pink-and-yellow swimsuit, a form made merely of paint,a garment that covered but…
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