The Latest
Love Letter to a Dead Body
let horses graze where remains are found
and you kiss me to shut me up
my skin bruise dark in the deep
Americans Dancing in the Heart of Darkness
We danced with Khmer boys. Strobe lights pulled us
on the floor. This way. That. Our feet groped the shiny, black tiles
reflecting the bar where old expats sat with Khmer women making money.
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart
There are many ways to die, you remind me,
pointing towards your scorched heart, lance-
pierced and thorn-leashed, as I think I’m dying,
sensation abandoning then shocking my body,
Three Poems, Three Watercolors
We thought again of Francisco de Zurbarán’s hands
And if what they held had half the weight
Of beauty and half the heft of truth, his
Beautifully dressed martyrs, ready to wear
Their death, which will continue to remain
Unfashionable
What Did Trump’s Strike Against Syria Actually Accomplish?
To understand Russian and U.S. strategies, you have to read between the lines.
Is There Such a Thing as Truth?
Does language connect us to the world, or lead us back to ourselves?
The Limits of Antitrust Enforcement
The problem of employer power runs much deeper than monopsony.
For Alem
He doesn’t know about the boys
she elegizes in poems
Resting beneath waves
bound & thrown there
Chirality
On the other side of the mirror I see that poisoned life, each molecule built so backward even the water became poison.
More precisely: thrashed in the spiral seawater makes between rocks.
Butterfly, web history, thyroid, locked phone, the spill of tablets on the kitchen counter, I carried your child.
Reduced to evidence, the state sees your point: Hispanic female, 35, 208 lbs.
Three Poems
Topaz eye, a hurricane
that rips the pages until the spine sprains,
until the foot on which it spun swells,
until the knee of the wind straightens and extends
until the common tongue pants for dexterity in the air.
Two Poems
I’m lucky, ghostly lucky,
when I start roaming
and recognize the sign on the door.
That’s when I whisper
to the nail, “you know
you little heathen
what you have done,”
Spring Poetry Microreviews
New poetry from Traci Brimhall, Camille T. Dungy, Jennifer Moxley, Laura Sims, and Michael Snediker.
Testing the Waters in Texas
Whoever figures out how to save Texas might just save the rest of us in the process
Haneke and the Technology of Intimacy
‘Happy End’ is the culmination of Haneke’s obsession with how technology mediates our desires.
Make It So
I heard somewhere that in Ancient Times folks believed the voice inside their heads (their
conscience? consciousness? homunculus?) was god/s
lol
The Erotics of Mentorship
The best teaching is always intimate. Today’s universities make it difficult to talk about that.
My Poem About Last Sounds
The summer deck is filling with riotous rain pouring down from your hands,
I think. I’m terrible at these supernatural images and you wouldn’t like if I kept it up.
I know you are trying to water the plants, and the seedlings and all of everything
I might have neglected for the last three months while I’m here fucking it all up.
The Holographic Principle
Dutch men explain things to me. Nederlandse mannen zeggen me dat ik de wereld ervaar in drie dimensies, en toch, zeggen Nederlandse mannen me, valt die tweedimensionaal te beschrijven. Dutch men tell me I see the world in three dimensions, but Dutch men tell me we can only solve this in two.
Get our newsletter
Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975
Registered 501(c)(3) organization
Help Us Stay Paywall-Free
Become a Member