Moth Light
By Fiction Issue 109
But it unfolded itself, and, like a long-held secret, its wings swelled wide enough to span her palm. Then she saw the color it had been keeping close: hind wings emblazoned with what shone like blue eyes, rimmed with gold and mounted on a concentric field of black.
Read MoreReconciliation
By Photo Essay Issue 104
As a queer woman raised Catholic, I have had a complex relationship to the church—making these photographs was part confession, part reconciliation.
Read MoreStill Mending: South Africa between the Shadow and the Light
By Essay Issue 92
NEXT TO THE ENTRANCE to the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the chief justices meet to uphold what has been called the “most progressive” of constitutions, stands a bronze sculpture by Dumile Feni, a South African of Xhosa descent. It is based on a smaller clay work made in 1987, at the height…
Read MoreThe Sparrow
By Short Story Issue 60
SHE’D BEEN Flying a Cessna, shooting practice take-offs and landings with a flight instructor at an Omaha airstrip that was just a windsock and one lane of unnumbered concrete runway veined with tar repairs. Richard Nixon was president, the month was September, the temperature was sixty degrees, and she was Karen Manion, mother of two.…
Read MoreHearts Like Radios
By Essay Issue 84
The following excerpt is taken from Chris Hoke’s new memoir, Wanted: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws, and Across Borders, published this month by HarperOne. FOR SOME TIME I’VE IMAGINED all of us having a fragile nerve inside of us, like a spiritual antenna deep within our core. Some people, I’ve thought, simply have…
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