Articles

Who is your ideal reader? a lit mag asked,and after careful thought, I decidedit’s Daniel Craig, circa 2006,deliberately emerging from the seain his little blue shorts, flinging waterfrom his hair, swaggering through the wavesand onto the beach, white sand clingingto his bare feet and somehow muscular ankles,striding to the chaise longue beside mine,and opening a …

before there was manthere was mother and the sweetinfinince of her chorus mother of heaven, mother of earth, mother of mothers and other gods. mother of motherlands, broken waters, mountain peaks, and fertile valleys. mother of wind, mother of music, mother of sorrow and song. mother of echoes, mother of echoes, of echoes, echoes. mother …

Although I have now lived inside the ivory tower for longer than I ever lived outside it, my arrival first felt like exile. That immigration seems like a far more dramatic passage than my journey from South Korea as an infant adoptee, though certainly the latter has inspired more curiosity. But I have no memory …

Having nottouched myselfin some timeowing tothe erosionof incrementalsadnessesthat can detacha personfrom their bodyas cleanlyas a cliffis sheared froma coastline,the doctorinforms methat lovingmyselfis now myjob. So I take upmy own twofingers andwork them withthe seriousnessof earned saltand an imaginarysalaryinto the littoralcavern ofmy pussy. Andlike a wavethat sweeps theunsuspectingfrom the rockybreakwater,quite suddenlyeveryonewho has everfucked me isfucking meagain—mywife’s …

My mother tells me my grandmother has begun to touch herself. Dress up, hands between her legs, furious & buckling, & I wonder: how long has it been since she’s been touched by anyone? Decades, I presume. Does there come a point in life where you stop craving pleasure or do you learn to no …

I remember the summer after Chernobyl for its fertility and vibrant colors. Whether it was due to the high levels of radiation blown toward the Crimean Peninsula by the northern winds, as my family speculated later, or to my grandfather’s tireless efforts to turn a cleared patch of clay into a kitchen-garden, that year our …

“Now you need not die again, but still I wish you were here” – Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider My nephew is writing a book, he says, about Martin Luther King, Jr. “Now why would you do that?” I asked him. “Pick a topic without so much competition. Who’s going to read your …

A carpet of moss exhales inside an abandoned temple. A lone figure scrapes grime from a row of faded headstones. He brings flowers to a sunken patch of grass—chrysanthemum, hyacinth, pink lily mid-bloom—& lights a white candle beside the bouquet. Pacing the soil above his love’s stripped bones, upon the damp ground he kneels. Summer …

She’s a healthy mussel. . . . She’s a wicked mussel. She’s a sliver of the liver of a river whose liver is sick. An ugly river, voluble with its complaints. I had this story from precisely such a river. Well, and so the credence you accord to trickling notes diluted and caught up in …

On a Friday in June 2022 the nurse practitioner warned my husband, Brad, and me that it might be too soon to hear our baby’s heartbeat. “If we don’t hear anything,” she said, “I don’t want you to worry.” For the next few minutes, as she finicked with the Doppler and cocked her head this …