Articles

The counselor says that I am in the romance phase. She is right. I am in love with heroin and with the needle, the whole ritual, in love even with the bruises on my arms.

You are two atomized
in one, our molecules
become wild air that whims
the world…

Katharine Blake on birth.

James Chapin on prison literature’s long moment—a review of books by Albert Woodfox, Tayari Jones, Zachary Lazar, Rachel Kushner, and Jackie Wang.

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski hears from her Bubbe’s ghost.

Hadara Bar-Nadav on praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

The monument is essentially didactic: look on my works, ye mighty. But the ruin, the legless trunk, is often the real lesson, on the passing of time and the erosion of reputation.

This isn’t about objects, really. It’s about narratives of humanity, where objects are merely tropes for human experiences.

Cal Freeman on the mythological cockatrice, which kills with a glance.

Photographing helped me see the small light in this epic darkness, to find a conscientious perspective.