As fall approaches, we want to celebrate the pieces that made this summer so special! Below, you can browse our list of summer 2021’s most-read pieces to see which essays, short stories, and poems left an impact on our readers.
Lyuba Boys by Sophie Crocker (Fiction)
“Under the surface, you find eerie, hyper-blue silence you didn’t know existed. The ocean itself is a whale, an animal with rocks for bones that has swallowed you. You are Pinocchio in an oxygen tank, a wooden boy attempting realness.”
Translation: Hong Kong Poet Chung Kwok-keung, translated by May Huang (Poetry)
“I scour my memories for your place
Patterns on the tiles blur more and more
Shadows of feet sway between unextinguished cigarette butts
Discrete chewing sounds have vanished around the corner.”
On the Path from the Edison Fishery to the Moose Boneyard by Russell Brakefield (Essay)
“There are mysteries that we, as writers, unlock and mysteries we simply ask about, dreams and questions and discords we raise for the sake of raising them alone. I’ve seen no wolves on this trip, and for that matter, no moose or fox either. But I’ve seen the bones to prove the hunger.”
64-West & KY State Fair by D.S. Waldman (Dispatch)
“About time, never wish for more, you told me,
and never wish for less, as if the present were
one of those teacups one sits in as a child, rotating
at once around two different centers.”
June 2021 Poetry Feature by Lisa Hiton, Romeo Oriogun, Patrick Riedy, and Corrie Williamson (Poetry)
“Groping at vapor shrouded
elevators and Erie’s eastern break
I sense you before me, comfort
of cement, rock, planks’ jutt into water.”
