Articles

It wasn’t that she was beautiful. I was nineteen and bulimic and all that mattered was being beautiful but Cece wasn’t beautiful, something off about her jaw from when they broke it to fix her underbite, dirty blond hair knotted carelessly on top of her head years before top knots were cool. It wasn’t the …

This city unstrings its fingerbones, unravels the dressI hide behind; doorsfixed shut, eyes on every clock blind. Solitaire cards played in the dark This is no game; I’ve seen it all before. picking petals off daisiesdrawn on my skin by his desire.The river’s polluted, the lake fire, my rowboatrotten wood. I’ve seenstrange things Lady, I’m …

“Luzon’s coastlines are receding.” – Lois Calderon, “Philippine coastline receding because of Chinese mining black sand,” CNN Philippines, May 27, 2021 Your brows reveal untapped coast, fresh ores, endless archives. Listen as your marrow seeds a winged spell. Listen for carapace stroking new waters. Listen to ocean as it murmurs to black sand. Listen to …

Carrie didn’t have any kind of visa to stay in the country. Her tourist visa had run out six months prior and she’d ended up working for cash at her friend Marianne’s holistic bookstore. That was where she met Bruce. Twice a week he came in to do healing sessions in the back room and …

Winner of the 2024 Tobias Wolff Award (Fiction) I always felt that the Aquarium was the eye of the city. From the top, it looked like a deep well that cast a shimmering dark blue shadow on people’s faces, making them seem transparent. The circular corridors of the gallery enclosed it like the Colosseum. Wearing …

In 1958, Angelo Rizzuto took a photograph of a mother and child waiting in New York’s Penn Station, a glass-domed extravaganza. The child looks like a doll sitting a few inches away from the mother, who wears white gloves and appears absorbed in thought. Likewise, the child is looking in a different direction. What liberates …

I need to tell you how I felt in the park this morning when I stood on the frosted grass with my dog as we stared at three wild horses eating these stiff blades. I’ve swallowedworse mouthfuls of winter, but stillI need to find better words than worseto describe that open cavity of wetlands they …

1. 8:07 I construct a game. It is a game only I know is being played, and I am the only one playing it. It is a game like a shadow and it is this: seeing how many drinks I can have without anyone noticing I’m not sober. Two hours ago they asked me how …

Winner of the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize (Nonfiction) “Maybe my thinking has been wrong all along. Maybe silence is not something to interact with, to be filled in, but rather to let wash over you, to exist within.” —Victoria Chang, Dear Memory Father:I have never heard your voice, other than in the conversations that neither …

something hooked between / my shoulder blades / tugs and I melt metallic / from the corners of my mouth / frothing silver lined foam / that crumbles once it’s past my chin / for me to stand on the rubble of / my own sterling saliva / as I turn myself to ore and …