Spring is upon us, but how do we know?
An Ode to the Blue Note
At the venue, the line between artist and spectator is meaningfully blurred.
should we be more solicitous about the earth spinning too fast
or is this just another thursday?
Two Poems by Naomi Riggs
i think / therefore I am / and I / am no child of yours
In Passing
At thirty-three years old, with not even an ugly contender at her doorstep asking to marry her, Alima had gone to see the old clairvoyant.
trees of my youth
what i’ve learned of love, i’ve learned it from trees.
The Sweetest Sorrow
I always knew when you were close. Sometimes, I would smell you on my clothes, but only on the nights you got drunk enough to sleep on my shoulder. I never moved you off, and you never complained about the crick in your neck in the mornings after.
Author Jason Reynolds never gets boring
For his 2024 novel Twenty-Four Seconds, Reynolds realized that there were not many books addressing “black boys’ tenderness.”
The Safest
My glory isn’t just in the moments I feel safest, but in the moments I know love.
Two Poems by Jack Brown
A man walks into the bar and sees only me
because I am there. He says Good enough but hesitates.
Papa, Ieyasu, and Me
Outside the wide kitchen window, the silhouette of Mount Fuji grew hazy in the dusk. When I declared, “Ieyasu is my favorite,” the pride in Papa’s smile was palpable through his thick, silvery beard.
My Ancestors Weren’t Eliot’s
we
are born
etched in names no one speaks,
their silence riding
the currents of our voice.
sacred bodies
how many times can someone cry out for God in a night?
For Comrades and Lovers
More than anything, Glenn Ligon’s UC installation embodies Whitman’s ideas of solitude as time spent alone that inversely enables someone to come closer to the city around them.
Camp (It’s a Mitzvah!)
It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease.
A Conversation with Ted Kerr
Through his life’s work as a social justice organizer and archivist, New School professor and alum Ted Kerr encourages us to think in multiple timelines and ever-expansive networks of memory, particularly as it relates to the world of HIV/AIDS.
DOG Tinder®
The truth is, I don’t feel as strong a connection to people and the city when I’m dogless.
I Bought a Rug
Recently, I looked around my room and thought, if I were to die inexplicably in my sleep, I would be surrounded by nothing.
Letter from the Editor, 2023-24
The phrase “particularly in these times” stands out to me.