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  • Tawny Scrawny Lion

    The first thing my mother taught me to say in English: I live on the Main Drain Road. 76894. My mother is in the pistachios. My father is in the almonds. My mother says I was four. She says I went to Señora Espinoza for daycare and I watched a lot of telenovelas, and I…

  • Book Recommendations from Our Former Guest Editors

    Tess Gallagher recommends Poems of Repossession: Leabhar na hAthghabhála edited by Louis De Paor, Irish-English Bilingual Edition (Bloodaxe Books, 2016). “This book of Irish poems in translation carries some very strong poems, [including] one by Seán Ó Ríordáin called ‘Switch,’ which is the central mandate for empathy—a poet’s main tool. Also, one may read what…

  • In Twilight

    The sickening canal retains a gruesome beauty. Today, the weather haswaxed psychotic—chilly rainy in the morning, humid and dense as itgrew hot, sunny for a second, and now the bluish gray of photographsof Eastern Europe flows from the train bridge into the sky. On thesurface of the water, a cascade of soap scum rises to…

  • Felt

    We feel we have felt felt. We have felt what felt we have. Havefelt. Feel. We feel what felt we felt is not what felt felt is. Whatwe have, we feel. What felt we have! Feel! Feel not what is, feelwhat felt is not. Not we, not felt. Is is is? We is what we…

  • Flash

    Picture civilizations like sparse swarms of fireflies, space/timelike the evening air in which they’re suspended. Each bug flashesindependently, never simultaneously, randomly announcing itselfwithout regard for its distance from another or for the duration of itslight. That one there! That one is us! Doesn’t it lately seem a foregoneconclusion that the psychotic combination of our science,…

  • Dialectic

    for Anna Maria Hong The master believes himself superior to his slaves. He desires comfort.He considers security and prosperity his birthrights. He prefers toignore the labor required to create his luxurious world. He often failsto acknowledge the extravagance of his environment by comparingit unfavorably to the surroundings of more prosperous people. Heignores anything that challenges…

  • Am I a Thief?

    First things first: I have bad feet. Otherwise this entire incident would never have happened. I prefer not to go into details about the feet—they’re rather intimate parts, don’t you think? Witness foot fetishes, for example. Or the binding of women’s feet in China, for which many cultural reasons have been adduced, but which always…