Indifference is far more efficient
than fission or fusion
as a weapon of mass destruction,
and far less problematic
than uranium or tritium
to procure, occurring,
as it does, massively in nature.
My dad could be tough and distant
and push a little too hard into what hurt
but if God pulled that Isaac shit on him,
saying “I want you to sacrifice your son
for me” it never would have got as far
as me strapped to some Moriah altar.
If I was nearby, he’d tell me to go inside.
Then, he’d resign, curtly quit, from God,
flick a Lucky at the old man’s feet, and
walk away. Later, I know he’d joke,
“That fucking guy? He couldn’t spell God
if you spotted him the G and the D,”
making me laugh even if behind his eyes
he was making peace with perdition.
Matt W. Miller is a poet, essayist, teacher, and author of Tender the River, The Wounded for the Water, Club Icarus (winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry), and Cameo Diner. A former Walter E. Dakin Fellow and Wallace Stegner Fellow, he lives in coastal New Hampshire with his family.
By CORY BEIZER
Before my mother can return to her life and stop watching me eat, she says she must give me a dog. She swears a companion is the only way she’ll feel safe leaving me alone. It makes no sense. How can I take care of a dog if I am failing to take care of myself? She says that’s the point, to learn how to care, and if the dog dies, well, then she’ll know when to come back. I tell her no. My beloved cow figurine is companion enough. Its thick apotropaic horns will fend off the evil that is sure to return.
By CASEY WALKER
Twelve years ago, in waters off the Azores, my father was thrown overboard on a whale-watching skiff and my mother thought she could save him. The trip had been my mother’s dream. She hadn’t seen the islands since she was a child, visiting her grandparents. My father’s overconfidence about boating in bad weather, an unanticipated storm surge, a possibly intoxicated boat pilot—that was the tragedy of my mother’s ancestral homecoming. No bodies were ever recovered. In lieu of caskets, the funeral director set up an oversized portrait taken on my parents’ wedding day. That young couple, with expressions formally posed, was all but unrecognizable to me.
By MOISEI FISHBEIN
Translated by JOHN HENNESSY and OSTAP KIN
Kol Nidre
And damp dust between stars will vanish,
and nothing will ever move or shine,
and as you look up at the sky at midday
the slanted rays will cross your sight.
By ALBERTO DE LACERDA
Translated by MARIA DE CALDAS ANTÃO
To John McEwan
The architecture of the sleeves—
White—
As she composes her response
To a letter
(On the marble floor
The seal
Jumps
From the crumpled letter)
Carla wore a mask while trudging down the precipitous dune that shadowed Longnook Beach, her heaven on earth. She had brought from her city stash a colorful assortment of boldly patterned Mexican face coverings to make the necessity of protecting herself from airborne viral droplets less depressing. But bright flowers and butterflies, stout yellow ears of corn, and iconic unibrow Frida Kahlo faces made it no easier to breathe on the descent.
Most days, Carla used the shaft of her sheathed sun umbrella to steady herself while maneuvering over uneven ground. Today, Tom wasn’t there to help her carry her beach chair, so she had left the heavy umbrella at home. She wasn’t one of those old ladies who needed a cane, was she? A grinding creak from her arthritic left knee followed by an aching twinge and throb of pain from her right hip warned her that the uphill return would be a challenge.
The boy circles once more through the kitchen, past the ledge of photographs & the St. Francis tin, inside of which sleeps whatever’s left of the dog. My boy shows no signs of slowing down despite my tired oration on the topics of physics & premonitions, that denouement when I too was a spinning child & my head tripped down its irreversible path into the solid corner of the piano bench. No signs of slowing down nor do I mention how, playing ghost & turning beneath the sheet, I felt like a cannonball, I felt like nothing else speeding through darkness & then through the fog near the rocky shore. Afterwards, I knew only gravity, my blood, the irrefutable bleeding.
My parents walk hand in hand through the snow in Seoul.
Instead of flowers, my dad brings a dozen doughnuts.
As fires burn halfway around the world.
From THE MEAD ART MUSEUM
More than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the independent states that emerged from its territory continue to grapple with its legacies. In Ukraine, this struggle has unfolded amidst a political and cultural war waged by Russia. As Vladimir Putin’s regime weaponizes the shared Soviet past in its attempts to erase Ukraine’s nationhood, the Soviet legacy remains the subject of heated debate among Ukrainians. While some identify “Sovietness” with “Russianness” and seek to remove it from the national narrative, others attempt to reclaim their Soviet legacy, emphasizing the agency of Ukrainians who created it.
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