“Refuge” by Joyce Carol Oates: “Experienced hikers never hike alone, Marcus used to say. “But lately Marcus has seemed to relish risk, speaking of his life as dice being tossed. Either you toss the dice yourself, or someone else does. Or fate. Life, like lovemaking, should be spontaneous and unprotected. In love, no one should wish to be protected.”
“The Translator” by Daniel Borzutzky: “Was Glusman alive? the translator asked the publishers. “He might be. Or he might be dead. Or missing, or hospitalized. He might be living in Avignon, Havana, Patagonia, Barcelona, or Bangkok. In any event, Glusman or Glusman’s literary executors did not want to be discovered so easily.”
Daniel Orozco, Dominica Phetteplace, Jeffrey Moskowitz, Gregory Spatz, and Kim Samek
Nonfiction
“Strays” by Marian Palaia: Pat, Scotty, Shery, Terry, and Eli. The Wild Side West, the Richmond, and Olympia. The lasting presence of dear people gone and an era long past.
Dan Alter on the sonnet—“or let me say more about not saying everything.”
Poetry
D.A. Powell, Katherine Franco, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, and Adam O. Davis
In Conversation
August Kleinzahler talks to Troy Jollimore about reading on transit during high school, expressing the ineffable feelings of music (from Thelonius Monk to Whitney Houston), and why “he has a thing for supermakets”.
