April’s only days
away. The wind strokes
sandstone cliffs, the cove
Caution in the Windy City, Thrown
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
—Emily Dickinson
Late
last night
[on way back
from hotel]
I walked
into the mouth
of a long empty alley
full of dark liminalities—
The Great Northwest
By ANN ANG
There isn’t much to do here. Wandering into a live military training area, I look for the pungent and prickly durians that fall only in the dead of night.
Lim Chu Kang isn’t a big place, situated as it is in the northwest of Singapore, a diamond shaped island state only 25 kilometres by 48 kilometres. But it gives the impression of space, dotted with orchid farms and odd patches of jungle with flaming red tulip trees from Africa. Botanists refuse to call this secondary forest.
Review: Once Upon a River
Book by BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
Reviewed by
If the Mississippi River belongs irrevocably to Mark Twain, then it’s safe to say Bonnie Jo Campbell has staked her claim in the waters of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. Campbell’s new novel, Once Upon A River, takes place on an imaginary tributary that flows into the Kalamazoo, the swift, treacherous Stark River. Out of curiosity, I spent some time looking at maps of the Kalamazoo River watershed, comparing them to the map of the Stark River that accompanies the book, illustrated in careful, calligraphic strokes by Adrian Kitzinger. While there’s no clear analog for the Stark in real life, one upward slash of blue caught my eye: Battle Creek. As much setting as character, the Stark is also a refuge and a hazard for abandoned teenager Margo Crane, who takes to its waters to escape the reach of her extended family and the looming threat of Social Services. Margo’s battles are both internal and terrifyingly tangible: after her father’s murder, she struggles to live without him, taking lovers out of an intriguing mixture of sexual curiosity, longing, and an instinctual knack for casting the best odds for her own survival. Part foundling, part Annie Oakley, and part proto-feminist, all Margo wants to do is escape the violent consequences of being on her own long enough to learn how to live.
The Common in the City
Tickets are now on sale! Visit the event page for more details.
The Center of the Rebellion
By LYNNE WEISS
Seneca Falls has a much bigger place in history than it does in geography. It is usually mentioned only as the location of the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention, famously organized by women’s rights crusader, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. So rarely is it mentioned in any other context that one might think it did not exist before or after that event. It’s a small town, much like many other old mill towns in New England and upstate New York, and seems an unlikely setting for, as Stanton called her farmhouse home, “The Center of the Rebellion.” (Stanton was proud of having kept her birth name–Cady–after she married, but for purposes of brevity I call her Stanton here.)
Intermission at Times Square
Around Times Square in New York City – images of the familiar cityscape where millions of people pass daily, taken at odd hours. This is an attempt to reveal a different state of that place, a place still permeated with blinking neon but devoid of its participants, left to itself. A surreal performance that continues without its audience.
At the Y
May 1966
The lav itself was tiny; its air felt warm and full. The walls of pale green tiles seemed to bend under a heavy film of water exhaled from my hot bath. Wet hair stuck to my face, which dripped with sweat. My cheeks burned. My eyelashes spilled water droplets so large I couldn’t see. I was sunk up to my neck in hot, sudsy bath water, soaking in my elixir of independence. I was taking my first bath on the first evening of my first day in my new home – the Y. My first day on my own. Ever.
Antiquing in the Desert
As a longtime collector of vintage American soda bottles, I’d become a bit numb to their charms. The bold funky fonts, the cheeky allure of cartoon mascots and Space Age starbursts etched into the glass – sadly, the very elements that drew me into this odd subset of antiquing had lost their luster. Then I found a cache of old bottles in the California desert.
Enclave Reading Series
Jennifer Acker hosts Martha Cooley, contributor to Issue 02, and Gabriel Brownstein, contributor to Issue 03, for the Enclave Reading Series.
Saturday, April 28, 4:00pm.
Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow Street, New York, New York.