In his powerlifting prime, Washington Post classical music critic Michael Andor Brodeur was able to lift 1,200 pounds of iron: the combined weight of his best deadlift, bench, and squat. […]
Books & Poetry
POETRY
Three Poems
Night-Blooming Cereus It wakes us to say to bloom once is not nothing. Night Once in a while –– sparks between people –– so stars can see everything they’re missing. […]
POETRY
Compensation
I think I understand. Without sufficient love, they compensate with hatred, not seeing how bountiful (how bountiful) it all really is… Rob Taylor’s Ads for Simplicity was published in 2013. He […]
BOOKS
The Long Shadows of a Dictatorship
Lily Meyer’s fictional Short War makes real the lasting trauma of the 1973 Chilean coup
Last September the people of Chile commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bloody, U.S.-backed coup d’état that changed the fate of their country and their lives on Sept. 11, 1973. […]
POETRY
Cape Window
Tonight the west wind is blowing through Aaron’s small window over his half-size bed, his toddler’s body. Where does wind come from? he asks. The sky, the weather, the whole […]
POETRY
Unpin That Red Pin Icon
The car slowly passed, back and forth, then at last crept up our half-washed-out driveway. An electric window slid down. “We’re looking for Moses Hinkley,” the driver said. I took […]
POETRY
The Swing
The light leads down the long white ropes it fills the swing, it swings the seat Each night each night the moon is full the long white ropes, the sucked-in cheeks […]
BOOKS
The Compromised Power of Being Young and Beautiful
Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues follows Gordon, a gay man who wants nothing more than to be looked at
Gordon, the 24-year-old antihero of Thomas Grattan’s queer coming-of-age novel In Tongues, craves attention the way Wall Street traders crave cocaine: with a slick kind of desperation and the certainty […]
POETRY
Outline
The merest touch of breeze or rain or passerby in early June sets pitch pines off in green-gold pollen spasms: old efficiencies of hazardous excess, their clouds stain everything they […]
POETRY
Long Nook
Poems of Truro resident Mary Maxwell’s five collections first appeared in Paris Review, Salmagundi, and Yale Review, among other publications. Submit poems to [email protected]. Include your full name, complete home […]
BOOKS
Three Friends From College, in Provincetown
A Novel Summer is the author’s fourth title set on Commercial Street
Summertime: the livin’ is easy, and maybe the reading should be, too. Dipping into Jamie Brenner’s new novel is like massaging your soles in the sand while anticipating that first […]
POETRY
Pete’s Beard
Long and white, prone to blowing like a whale’s salty plume it’s the first thing you notice: his panache, his dare his disguise. And then the eyes a quiet blue, […]
POETRY
The Thing Itself
After Dylan Thomas
It was really like that. Autumn brown night washed the avenues and we talked of nothing important, just power and pleasure and paradise. Nothing was, but the slope of her […]
BOOKS
Sociologist Allison Pugh Warns Against ‘Heedless Technophilia’
In The Last Human Job, she explores the value of being seen
Almost half of the four-year-olds in Utah are enrolled in preschool online. They watch animated videos and sing songs to learn “pre-reading,” which education administrators in the Beehive State apparently […]
PRIDE
The Fantastical Spaces of Phil Jimenez
A comics artist pencils and inks a way out
Comics artist and writer Phil Jimenez was alone a lot when he was growing up in Long Beach, Calif. “Drawing was a way to entertain myself,” he says. Known for […]