The journalist and biographer Jason McBride and I have some confusion about how we first met—definitely before we were in Germany together for a symposium. The marathon reading of Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School we both took part in? The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery? KGB Bar in New York’s […]
Ghosts Again
One afternoon in early October Elena and Yamioletta were finishing warm forty-ouncers on Rey’s porch when Yamioletta offered to drive Elena around. Elena thought it might be like off-roading in the hills, which she had done with Sam and Chris in high school. They drove across the fields under electrical towers and along the fire […]
Michael’s Marriages
It’s not a long story, but it’s a story as old as time. Michael’s family is filthy rich. They invented Jell-O or something. Michael will never work a day in his life. These are Michael’s marriages. (I have not been married myself.) Marriage #0 This marriage lasted one second. Her smile felt stale. Her tongue […]
Her Past Was Stronger than the Pull of Our Present
“Let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.” — O. Henry My mother is the ghost of my life, like her mother was the ghost of hers. In deciding not to have children, this is how I have ensured no more children will see ghosts. Or become them. In […]
Museum of Beautiful Women
Natalie Wood’s motion sickness pills / the pajamas Whitney Houston wore for seven months / Caroline Flack’s sweatshirt & matching sleeping mask / the suicide note Margaux Hemingway never wrote / the pink hyacinths in Sharon Tate’s hair on her wedding day / the inkwell Frances Farmer threw at a judge in 1943 / Peg […]
McGovern Junior High
“Bravado convinced me that despite polling, McGovern was going to win in a Dewey defeats Truman kind of way.”
Chasing the Goose
An email arrives from BOLD Nebraska. I no longer live in Nebraska and have never been bold, but I do like to know when it’s time to plant the sacred Ponca corn, and if plans to build Keystone XL have finally been buried, and if Jane Kleeb is a real person because what would the world be like if […]
Something for the Weekend
A vibrant showcase of queer art marks the return of Queeriosities to London this weekend.
THE OTHER WOMAN
It is simply unconscionable that, when the New York Review of Books recently elected to republish two books by Diana Athill, After a Funeral wasn’t one of them. Easily Athill’s best work, After a Funeral recounts her relationship with Waguih Ghali, an Egyptian writer who committed suicide inside her London flat in 1968. Ghali lived […]
PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE
He sucked his thumb. His most encrusted secret, which I now betray. I, Sole Custodian Of The Vault of Him, witness, bearer of his shame, his rage—watching him breathe, soft, like a baby, next to me, lips pulsing full and round, his sculptor’s thumb—large, hairy—his hammer hands at rest, eyes cradled under his lids, looking […]
Lore Segal wrote the Great American Novel you never read (and should)
The author of ‘Her First American’ – who died on October 7 – reflects on her incredible life as a contrarian.
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