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In the old days, Whiskey greeted her at the front door every morning. Fourteen-hour overnight shifts were no match for the cat’s crippling separation anxiety. Now, she was lucky to get more than one glimpse of her speckled brown coat per day. “Whiskey! Breakfast!” she calls, and cracks open a pink can of Fancy Feast, a feeble attempt at enticing the cat out of her hiding spot. James had never let her buy wet food for Whiskey, usually picking up one of those cheap, unappetizing orange-and-pink kibble mixes himself. It was one of the first parts of her daily routine…
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by Ada Limón Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflowerand snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecyand the stoic farmer and faith and our father and ’tisof thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and godnot forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,enough of the will to go on and not go on or howa certain light does a certain thing, enoughof the kneeling and the rising and the lookinginward and the looking up, enough of the gun,the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lostletter on the dresser, enough of the longing andthe ego…
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by Chloe Michelle Howarth 5/5 I purchased a copy of Sunburn at a bookstore called Novellette in Nashville halfway through my 10-day drive to New York City, and I could not have chosen a more riveting read to accompany me. Sunburn is a devastatingly beautiful (but not necessarily unhappy!) story of first love and repression. Everything about it was just gorgeous, from beginning to end. The characters, the connections, the setting, the imagery of the golden summer sun on skin. I was extremely attached to the main character, Lucy, and I saw a lot of myself in her. I’m obsessed…
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There was a game you played as a child: After swimming, lying fetal on your side on the hand-me-down towel, she outlined whispersof words along your spine. You never guessed right.You never held in your mind more than a singular shape, divine. Can you feel it yet? Three letters. God? Sometimes, and thenothers Satan, saint or demon. Like Lot’s wife, sacrificed on a whimto the memories of minor men for whom heaven is but a will to bend: rubble, amen! At least Eurydice had a name, as ordinarily mundane andincomplete as the 3:16syou prayed to, painstakingly finger-painted in dirt on the back of a trailer. Dust echoesashes. You remember Pompeii, where words froze in women’s gaping…
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by Tove Ditlevsen I love you because your spirit flickerslike a candle left by a window.I love you because when I think you’re mine,the flame blows out, and it isn’t so.I love you because you don’t carry onabout wedding bells and vows and things,a love like ours, so fleeting and precious,should not be bound by any gold rings.For I will never darn your tattered socksor see you trudge about with a frown,and you will never find me tired and glum,wasting away in an old nightgown.No, let us meet in the very late hours,and dance, dance, while others are asleep.Let’s ask…
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by Casey McQuiston 4/5 I’m a few weeks late posting my review for this one! I read One Last Stop at the beginning of summer, about a month before I left Austin for New York. This book is a romance, time travel novel, and love letter to the NYC public transportation system all in one, and its heavy-handed over-romanticization of the subway system is just what I needed before my big move. I always prefer a romance with a non-romantic primary plot, and the time travel elements of One Last Stop did not disappoint. Jane’s trapped existence on the Q…
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The shop smells like cut stems and lemon-scented Lysol. It’s one of the few places in the city that stays the same, year after year, even as the lifespan of its patrons shortens and the yellowish haze outside grows thicker. “Six pink carnations, six white daisies,” she says to the florist, hesitates a moment, then adds: “And some green, if you have it.” With the middle-aged woman distracted, she browses the half-empty rows of overpriced plants. She detaches the arm of a miniature succulent and pinches a yellow pothos stem from the vine with her fingernails. A scrawny lemon tree…
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by Adrienne Rich Either you willgo through this dooror you will not go through. If you go throughthere is always the riskof remembering your name. Things look at you doublyand you must look backand let them happen. If you do not go throughit is possibleto live worthily to maintain your attitudesto hold your positionto die bravely but much will blind you,much will evade you,at what cost who knows? The door itselfmakes no promises.It is only a door.
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by Lydia Millet 3/5? I think? I read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart back in February and managed to put off writing the review for several months. I’m glad I did—this was one of the most perplexing things I’ve ever read, and I feel like six months was the minimum amount of time I needed to stew on it. When I first finished it, it left a sour taste in my mouth, but the further out I get, the more I seem to remember it with fondness. I still don’t know whether I would say I actually liked it, but…
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of forgiveness. Who we forgive, and why, and maybe more importantly, how. If I say out loud that I forgive my father for his absence or my mother for only ever wanting a mother herself, does that make it true? Does forgiveness have to be felt to be envisioned? Mostly, when I think about forgiveness, I think about August 2023: a sticky summer night, sweating over hibiscus ginger mocktails at a table at Radio Coffee. I have always run hot, I told her, and she made us switch seats so I…
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Emily Vance Brown 