Illustration: flickr.com / xyzquantumpoet
A Lutheran seminary student wonders what it takes to become a Jew for his girlfriend, whose embrace is “not a preface to anything else.”
I …
Fiction
Cliff jumping at Tenkiller Lake, August 2011. Photo: Rachel Folmar A teenager finds himself living in the shadow of his lover’s deceased boyfriend. Cordell stopped by the gallery to drop off…
Photo: Kai C. Schwarzer A relationship is put to the test when a young couple visits a family member on an isolated island. We left home to think it over. Nanna had an abortion three years a…
Illustration: Heidi Tailleferr First and foremost, we focus on the comfort of our clients.” “And what aspects of your operations are oriented toward that goal?…
Photo: YSBRANDCOSIJN / 123rf stock photo Who needs confusing laws and bothersome committees when you have an autocrat writing principles for every aspect of your life? He was not tall or br…
Photo: www.flickr.com/people/fineplan When you are a pestilent being the world stops being pestilent. Or does it? Each night Rafa stares at the vestibule in hatred until those in li…
Photo: James Abbott Some people feel a need to be silent, but I need to look at myself in the mirror, scream, smash things, and tear up my own writing. That’s not so bad, it really isn’t, because all…
Profile photo: Chandan Kumar Photo: Michael Pham If only people loved one another and learned to save money, if only the children at the orphanage could get foster parents, if only the sun shone bri…
Photo: Barn Images/ ift.tt/1PhXbX2 Since you intend to kill yourself anyway, why don’t you fit your death into our plans? We need heroes, and it’s all the same to you, he…
Photo: Michael Pereckas Of Darkness is a book about love and death. These seem to me to be the only things worth writing about. When you write about love and death, the beauty in this world’s fa…
STABLE URLhttp://www.gumtree.co.za/a-car-tyres-rims/overport/for-sale-set-of-second-hand-imported-momo/1001639422780910165059408SALE AREAOverport (Durban)DATE…
How to Deliver a Genius Advice from a St. Petersburg–based website (*) Conceive in April, May, or June. A child conceived in the fall has no chance to amount to anyt…
Mexico City’s TAPO station from above. Photo: Anthony Quigley She picks up her suitcase. Gets in line. Shows her ticket without letting her fist tremble. Checks her luggage. They’re not…
Photo: Gerry Paille/Flickr In this story from a snowy Greenland, a woman reluctantly joins her husband in the woods for a grouse hunt. Ready . . . aim . . . She’s still in bed. She…
Tamas Galambos, Summer, 1981, oil on canvas. A detail from Galambos’s painting also appears on the cover of García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude reprinted by Peng…
Photo: Funkyfood London - Paul Williams / Alamy Along the shore of the Danube, a cat reflects on world history and human nature. From Oppenheimer to Donne to Stalin to Ana Pauker the mus…
Photo by Jo Christian Oterhals If, the woman thinks, she were an airplane that crashed and someone located the little black box, that would be the sentence they found, to hear water, but…
Gustav Klimt, Allée in the Gardens of Schloss Kammer, 1912, oil on canvas. Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria / Artothek / Bridgeman images Ride the tram through…
Photo: flickr.com/people/duluoz_cats With Neil Young playing in the background, a New Zealand woman living in Australia recrosses the ocean over a game of Checkers. Luke shakes the…
A long, long, time ago, in the time of the gods, two of them were in love with the same goddess. Que hermosa, with her shining white and blue-blue rainbow hair surrounded by stars circling her like e…
Photo by Juan Di Nella/Unsplash I’m not the first to ask, but for a long time I’ve been wondering about one of the first dilemmas we’ve faced as a band: the question of language. To put it in terms o…
Photo by Ariel Dovas Stasis and disruption go head to head in this story from Macedonia. It’s not clear whether my husband is going to be ambassador for much longer, as he might be…
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. – Robert Frost Even from a distance we could tell something was wrong with the wall. When we went out to the pasture the ground seemed f…
Photo by Soffie Hicks In this story by Brazil’s nominee for the Nobel Prize, a young girl will let nothing stop her from attending Carnival, not even her dying father. The blue-and-…
A broken foot is poor luck and a nuisance. It cancels everything from hikes to trips to Germany. It gives your insurance company an opportunity to feast and acquaints you with an orthopedist, often m…
