Olive the (lion) dog. Image by Andrea Farrow, via Instagram The mane streams behind the dog as it tears across weathered gray floorboards. “Frickin’ lion.” The seven-second Instagram reel auto-loops on my Thursday lunch hour and I become obsessed with this dog that I later find out belongs to my colleague Jessica’s sister, Andrea. I…
Category: 21st century
Umbrology – Brian McNely
I stepped off the plane in Helsinki – airport code HEL – and found a restroom. Standing at a urinal, I heard birdsong piped through overhead speakers: odd, soothing, out of place. The train to downtown Helsinki departs from a giant, cool tunnel many meters below street level. The platform is nearly empty. Massive faux-tapestries…
Lemons – Victory Witherkeigh
“You made it, Grandma!” I said as I gave her a hug. The gold tassel swished in my face from the graduation cap I hadn’t removed yet. “I’ve been to all your graduations, Iha,” she replied in a huff, “And, I’ll be at the next one.” I gripped her hand as she steadied herself with…
I Can’t Recall a Time Without War – Casey Canright
The weeks that followed exploded into a patriotic frenzy. Red, white, and blue dotted every neighborhood – even our own. Old Navy’s Fourth of July T-shirts reemerged for the last few weeks of September. Dad brought home a flag – taller than me – which I demanded be hung by the front door, just like…
TWO POEMS – Patrick Landy
the slow inflections of the wind
where rivers run like scars.
The moon hangs quietly
in the blackened air, halved and emptied, decaying since dusk
It’s Always Going Away: Losing the Places We Love – Nina Smilow
New York is often unfairly maligned for being unfeeling, but that’s just what we call uncontrollable things, which the city is. It tumbles on, transforming a million times over the course of a decade before remaining stagnant for far too long. Occasionally, shifts rise rapidly from seismic events. I’ve seen sudden pivots in the wake…
TWO POEMS – DS Maolalai
waking
at midnight
to piss
on the sand dunes
and the sky overhead
like a badly
scratched frying pan.
ONE POEM – Nóra Blascsók
In an ideal world
the washing machine
is a portal to clean linen
dishes lean back like sun
loungers by the sink
Heaven-Born Things – Sally Gander
What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.Marcus Aurelius ‘It’s about a third full,’ I say, clutching the mobile phone to my ear as I hang my head into the water tank, my voice bouncing off the metal sides and echoing back at me. ‘Does the pipe…
ONE POEM – Mary Chydiriotis
a chant begins
a loud doleful wail
smear my body in holy oil
adorn my head with your crown of thorns
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them: Managing Isolation and Becoming the Fabric of a Place – Joanna Mason
January and the New Year are often dreaded in their insistence that we look back on what we have achieved, or what we meant to. This year, the looming of March feels the same, with its marking of the anniversary of the initial lockdown. It is easy to be hard on the progress you have…
ONE POEM – Nicola Maclean
Zones one to three have become a long-distance relationship.
Underground, Hades and his sardine dead
reach their eleventh hour
Porridge 