Joining a yoga studio forced me to think about breathing. I’m conflicted as I kneel on my mat waiting for class to begin. Despite breathing being essential to staying alive, I’ve always worried about bad breath. Worse is the worry of losing your breath entirely and not being able to draw it back. The worst …
Literary Nonfiction Editor Kristen Iversen: In “Specs,” Ismael Rodriguez gives us a powerful and compassionate essay about family, inheritance, and the fragile, imperfect bond between father and son. He examines the weaknesses and shortcomings of family—especially fathers—and how they shape the narrator, as these things shape us all. Rich with vivid details of character and …
Imperative: “A grammatical mood that forms commands or requests, including the giving of prohibition or permission.” —The Logical Language Group Remember when you realize that you have fallen in love. It is not supposed to happen to you, a woman trying to become a nun. Renunciation. Not so much of the world in general but …
I’d heard plenty about how a mother’s devotion to her kids is primal. I got it—I could imagine that sort of wild, beyond-the-brain love, the kind of protectiveness that can sprout claws and incisors. I expected having a child to change my priorities, my routines, my capacity for tenderness and rage. I didn’t expect it …
ROSALIND: They say you are a melancholy fellow. JAQUES: I am so; I do love it better than laughing. —As You Like ItUnderneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character —Oscar Levant, An American in Paris Oscar Levant is a melancholy figure, full of barbed wit, self-loathing, and Rhapsody in Blue, which he …
Someone holds the makeshift beach up from one end, and the world floods, swell surging to one side of the homemade wave machine before the water rushes back, quick, aggressive, eroding bits of the science fair project with violence before softening slowly, slowly. Repetition eventually grinds everything down to nothing. We are supposed to make …
When I was a child, everything was perfect all the time. I was long planned for and executed with great care: my mother dressed me in tailored suits, flounced petticoats, buttons shaped like clocks, sheepskin coats, electric-blue felt, coordinated layers of hot pink and purple, drop waists, sequins, Peter Pan collars with scalloped edges, oversize …
I know an old man who lives at the edge of the world, in Alaska, a town called Bethel. The first people arrived via ice bridge. Now we fly on planes. The old man lives with an old woman, his wife. He built the house they live in. He builds other things too, boats, furniture, …
First thing to understand: its rhythm. The phrase should be scanned like “résumé.” • The fore, middle, and aft vowels are nearly identical, trafficking between the short a, e, and u—assonance achieved by way of obscenity. An R-rated schwa. • Which is to say that in Risky Business Tom Cruise is saying it incorrectly. • …
Literary Nonfiction Editor Kristen Iversen: What I admire most about this essay is the author’s courage in confronting a subject that is both deeply personal and, regrettably and even tragically, part of a wider cultural experience. Montgomery’s memories, lyrical style, skillful metaphors, and forthright engagement with a persistent and often frightening cultural problem are especially …