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I do not want to be loved like the sea. I do not want to feel my waves crashing against your shore, to become a predictable, natural menace around which lovers plan their evening picnics. I do not want to be feared like the sailor fears the squall. I do not want to be loved like the moon, admired from afar, respected, written about, sung to. Untouchable in my aloofness. Alone in my tragic beauty, a victim to my impenetrable, inevitable fate. I do not want to be worshipped in the night and forgotten with the rise of the sun.…
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by Marge Piercy Learning to love differently is hard,love with the hands wide open, lovewith the doors banging on their hinges,the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the roomsrustling the sheets and snapping the blindsthat thwack like rubber bandsin an open palm. It hurts to love wide openstretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster,then of blunt knives, thenof sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexesof grab, of clutch; to love and letgo again and again. It pesters to rememberthe lover who is not in the bed,to hold back what is owed to the…
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by Fernando A. Flores 4/5 I heard about Fernando Flores’s writing first when I still lived in Texas—he’s a local Austin author who’s well known there for his book Tears of the Trufflepig. I never had the chance to read any of his work before I left, although I always meant to. I saw this book at my favorite bookstore here in Brooklyn and knew it was finally time! I really enjoyed Valleyesque, and I’m hoping to lend it out to several of my friends soon. This collection would be a great fit for fans of Kelly Link (whose short…
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The last time I visited here, I was worshipped; the people birthed and married and fought and died in my honor; they donated the finest scraps from their tables, even when those tables neared empty; they built temples and destroyed monuments for the sake of my glory, and when I finally fled I did so knowing that my names, of which there were many, would not be forgotten. And they have not forgotten me, although the names that were once whispered in pleading prayers are now found more frequently in their square-bound scrolls and their talking pictures and the neon…
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by Billy-Ray Belcourt Utopia is an impossible demand. Most likely,it’s what happens when no one’s looking. On Grindr, my profile stated: DESIRE IS A PLANETTRAPPED INSIDE AN EVEN BIGGER PLANET. The men I met were aroused by the world; I was aroused by the opposite of the world. Turns out there can be so much nightinside a single man that to be contained within it is a kind of violence. Turns out the bodyis so much more than I ever bargained for. Of course I didn’t love them properly—I livedwith the vastness and loneliness of a continent. Please don’t ask me…
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by Anne Carson 5/5 Autobiography of Red was my first ever Anne Carson read–I’ve never even read any of her standalone poems until now! I thought this book was gorgeous and completely different from anything else I’ve read. Carson’s epic poem tells the magical, and at times, haunting story of Geryon. As he grows, he experiences trauma, infatuation, and heartbreak as he comes to terms with what it means to be red. I feel like I should have more to say about a book I loved so much, but there’s just nothing else to be said. It was perfect.
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Carbon monoxide poisoning in the public library parking garage — $5 an hour.Anything to relieve the August heat. It’s better than fighting crowds forfreezing springs, spreading like salamanders on algae-ridden rocks. dying grass shores are a bed to stretch catlike and tan our backs beside theonly overpriced tourist destination I still visit alone in this place, where cost and heat rise in unison. The warmer the climate, the steeper the rent. The truth is, I don’t remember the time before. I can’t explain whythe summers sear memory more than skin, or why we suffer so much just to pay ourdues to the Capitol…
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by Destiny O. Birdsong your therapist wants to know where in your body you most feel your anxiety. you tell her in the bones behind your face. they have their own music, like ptolemy’s universe, and chirp like shuriken dancing in the road. your therapist says you hurt because there are things you’ve never been taught to do: how to hold yourself in sleep. how to drive. how to live with men. back when you were five—or maybe four— your father knelt before you for the last time, close enough that you could smell him, a zephyr of kool’s filter…
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by Ruth Ozeki 4/5 As the last book I read in 2025, The Book of Form and Emptiness perfectly tied up my year in literature. I’ve been interested in exploring magical realism more, and while I’m not sure this novel would technically fall under this description, it was certainly magical, and a few times more realistic than I was emotionally prepared for. The book’s narrator is the book itself, that is to say, Book, as a sentient character. I loved the ambiguity between magic, psychic powers, and psychosis, and I especially loved the fact that distinguishing between the three is…
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From the highest point on the hill, Charlotte could see something glinting gold in the sunlight—about 50 feet away, at the foot of a large rock. She inched down the gravelly slope. The object was a ring, gold, with a single empty facet on the front, which Charlotte knew from her books and the occasional movie was where a stone would have gone. Maybe a diamond, she thought. On the inside of the ring was inscribed: To Shyanne, my love 10/15/2025. Charlotte’s stomach rumbled, and she pocketed the ring and went inside. The dinner bell rang at 7:03. Miss Suzie,…
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Emily Vance Brown 