Dear Mr. Trump, On behalf of witch hunters the world over—and we do work on every continent but Antarctica, where we’re currently trying to establish a field office—I urge you to please stop referring to every...
Entertainment
Three Letters of Recommendation
I will grant you anything you want, the Genie of the Lamp said. Three wishes…but first you must provide three letters of recommendation. The villa in Italy where they serve you bonbons hourly, while you gaze at the...
Lettuce All
_____ Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Hunger...
2018: A Counter-Factual
Hillary Clinton limps into her second year in office badly battered and in poor humor. She has lately refused to hold press conferences, or even speak off-the-record as she had done regularly in the early days of...
Food & Drinks
Four Poems by Denise Duhamel
MY MOTHER’S COVER-UP I bought one for her at Walgreens—teal blue with sparkles. She was so hunched over and short by then, it flowed almost to her ankles. I kept it here in Florida so that when she visited it was one...
Protagonist Syndrome
my girlfriend’s best friend is convinced she has covid. I’ve heard all her stories – I admit, there’s a good chance she has. but last week, when her housemate was sick with a fever, she had said it was...
from The Hyakunin Isshu: A Hundred Poems by A Hundred Poets
42. Chigiriki na Katami no sode wo Shibori tsutsu Sue-no-matsu yama Nami kosaiji to wa —Kiyowara no Motosuke We promised— Holding onto each other; While twisting each other’s sleeves, Waves would never surge over...
Lifestyle
Survival and Solace: Story of a Refugee Turned Aid Worker
One day in the autumn of 2016, Sami Malouf [1], a 26-year-old Syrian refugee, stepped off a bus in Athens, Greece. Sami had no money. It wasn’t a case of having not much money; he didn’t have any money. He had heard of...
Ned Rorem (1923-2022)
“Do not go, Gentile, into that good night,” I murmured, reading of Ned Rorem’s recent death. It’s hard to imagine what a shock, in 1966, when religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation were still taboo, the self...
Girl Versus Gun: What I Learned from Dating a Responsible Gun Owner
He slept with a teddy bear until he got a gun. Then he slept with his gun. That is not what Machiavelli meant when he wrote, “There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not.” We met online...
Latest articles
How to Become American
Watch Friends. Try saying “kʰẽə̃nt” instead of “kɑːnt”. At dawn, draw a new Rangoli pattern on the threshold of your home in Old Hyderabad. Dry rice flour on damp terracotta tile, it shoots...
Chat GPT Prompt for Great American Novel
I am going to describe the book I want you to write. If at any point in this chain of commands you get stuck, save your output and return to me the sentence in these instructions where you broke the book. I will fix the...
The Right Shoes
This couldn’t be happening, but it was. Diana met her manager’s gaze, then looked down. The issue was the application she maintained, which was outdated. The technology would no longer be supported. “Your position is...
ON THE WAY TO PARADISE
Jessie O’Neal is touring again. The Tribune printed another clever Jessie story. I’m sure she called the reporter. She knows them all by now. Maybe she needed to sell more tickets. The lady knows how to create interest...
The Desert
Translated from Kurdish by Basir Borhani Hashoush’s younger sister rushed inside and spat out briskly, “Mom…! Mom, the Kurds will be moved again tomorrow.” At that moment, Hashoush and I were sitting opposite each...
The Escape
Evin Prison, 9:10 p.m. Local time. October 15, 2022 She wanted to run…but she could only take one long step to every corner of the cell and: wall…wall…wall… she pulled up her chin on the rusty sill around a small...
