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Russian Ending

Jerry Williams

As in some demented romantic comedy, my wife and I divided the apartment in half. She took the living room and I took the bedroom. Bivouacked and bleeding, we waited for the lawyer to finish the …

Adieu

Jonis Hartmann, translated by A. A. Srinivasan

A hair fell from her head. It fell and fell and I followed it with my gaze. It landed in one of the trays that sat on a scale. It threw the scale out of balance. The scale tilted. It …

First They Hypnotize You, Then They Paint You

Jonis Hartmann, translated by A. A. Srinivasan

The people now inhabit the crowns. There is, in fact, little space up there, but no one turns off your water or comes by with the leaf blower or raises your rent out of the blue. Up …

A Micro Movie

Hua Qing, translated by Liang Yujing

A strong wind breaks a tree branch by the roadside. The branch trips up an electric bike. Its food delivery box tumbles to the ground. A rental bike bumps against it, tips over. The two riders fall …

The Last Summer I Saw Ahmed

Amro Alkado

Before I learned about war, loss, or cruelty, I learned about joy from a boy named Ahmed. My great aunt’s neighbor couldn’t speak yet, but I enjoyed spending time with him. He was quiet, and I …

Residual: Interview with Tisa Bryant

Rosa Boshier Gonzalez

Writer, editor, educator, and collaborator Tisa Bryant does not merely write across genres; she stretches them, the boundaries between memoir, criticism, and theory pulled taut until they give way to …

Review of Fenestration by Othuke Umukoro

Xiadi Zhai

“Though there is ordinarily no language for pain,” Elaine Scarry writes in the introduction of The Body in Pain , “under the pressure of the desire to eliminate pain, an at least fragmentary means of verbalization is available both to those who are themselves in pain and to those who wish to speak on behalf of others”.…

Issue 38.2

The Family Frog

Jerry Williams

A frog jumped out of the broom closet; the wife was already screaming; and the husband burst into the kitchen, squeezed the trigger of his face. In the time it took the morning light to stream …

Honeymoon

Elias Sadaq, translated by Denver David Robinson

I write to the learned Sufi the rabbi the imam and the shaman on WhatsApp whom I now have to pay my dowry...

Layla and Majnun

Elias Sadaq, translated by Denver David Robinson

Majnun loves his Layla like a man possessed his love burns hearts glasses and plates...

Gazelle

Elias Sadaq, translated by Denver David Robinson

I don’t want to go to the mosque only women may walk around in gold and silk ustad says when he caresses my ears my Arabic teacher calls me his gazelle

Read the Entire Online Issue

A Poetics of Discernment: Lisa Olstein’s Distinguished Office of Echoes

KT Herr

Any work of erasure constitutes, by definition, certain frictions: a negotiation of authority; a wrestling with the vicissitudes of technique; and an unavoidable contretemps with the overtly …

Purple Glue Sticks

Bran Sargent

There are only five things Molly would miss if she killed herself. She would miss her vape. She’d miss the taste of its hazelnut coffee-like pulls and the exhaled clouds that take up more space in …

Ambrosia

Anesa Miller

Here in Westerville, the City Services Department handled weed complaints from picky residents who value beautiful lawns. For a modest fee, crews would pick up well-sorted yard waste three times per …

White Sugar

Gessica Sakamoto Martini

At night, my friend, awake in bed, takes yet another hard candy from the box, heedless of its taste, and after unwrapping it, throws the wrapper on the floor where it will remain for a million years. …

From the Archive

Blueberry Ballad

Sharon Olds

In what may have been our last week, we went down to the late afternoon meadow, and stood at the high blueberry bushes,

Three Stories

Lydia Davis

I said to him that I had been trying to write a story in a Ring Lardner sort of style. He asked me what a Ring Lardner sort of style was. Ring Lardner was a writer of humorous stories, I said…

Death Watch

Kwame Dawes

“Well if you leave out his personal life, he was a happy man.” —Lynn Brown Jr., business associate of Wallace Stevens It is, of course, old Wallace Stevens, austere as a cow in autumn, …

ART

Jakayla Monay, The Unknown Somebody ft. Robert Patrick Taylor V, photography.

Jakayla Monay, ii. What God Sees ft. Brandon Goss, photography.

Jakayla Monay, i. What God Sees (Radiant Waters) ft. Tyson Londojn, photography.

Jakayla Monay, Country Bloom ft. Saida Carter, photography.

Jakayla Monay, Breakfast at Denny's ft. Myles Houston and Aubrey Houston, photography.