Christmas is all about the traditional: gingerbread, brandied eggnog, tinsel, and curling up in front of toasty fires with good stories. Or, if you’re a poor motherless MFA student like us at The Brooklyn Review: a fifth of whiskey, a shoplifted fir-scented candle, and your roommate’s three-month-old copy of The New […]
Two Poems | Eileen Hennessy
DEPARTURE OF THE ARK At midnight it was still chewing quietly on its anchor chain while the puddles meandering along the waterfront engulfed the chunks of watermelon we had thrown overboard after our farewell picnic. At two a.m., sound of the waterfront tugs suddenly flapping and […]
Motions for Red Coffee | Alec Hershman
Listen, my best wishes for you are built from the inside out, like a sentence after the eye falls upon a reasonable stone and opens a window I remembered to save the glass, to feel December’s bearable embrace. At the cemetery edge, the shade of a neighboring house passes […]
From One Crotchety Spectrum Septuagenarian Too Chicken To Do Real Speed | Gerard Sarnat
While First Lady Nancy Reagan was exhorting us turkeys to Just Say No, daughter Patti wrote, “my mother was a pill-popping Quaalude shrew.” As a gaggle of rugged individualists, some fellow travelers pick stimulants. Starbucks, CVS and shrinks offer caffeine, diet capsules, and Ritalin variants. Then IMHO, there’s Lockean ecstasy […]
An Interview | Monet Hurst-Mendoza
Monet Hurst-Mendoza is an accomplished NYC-based playwright from LA. Rising Circle Theater Collective, Looking Glass Theatre (NYC), Amios, Playwright’s Playground at Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and many others have developed her plays. She is a current member of the 2017 Emerging Writers Group at The Public […]
Permanent Change of Station | Jake Sheff
The room is bare, except for the girls Kneeling surreptitiously by the window, Keeping watch on harbor seals. The girls Are formerly land-locked Army brats Displaced by houses, yards and fences Caught on rotating schedules like Themselves. The harbor seals are rollicking, As harbor seals are wont to do without […]
Two Poems | Helen Calcutt
Teeth From a blindfold of lips every particular touch is as hurting is to grass. On these nights, your fingers almost sensibly set their ask to air — almost regrettably, tease the lotus notion of passing, not skin to skin or such heat but taking a route rendering the half-opened […]
From the Archives: “This Is About the Radio” | CJ Hauser
“Sam realized there was a reason people went to dinner parties in twos. It was important to have someone there to squeeze your knee under the table when someone made an ass of himself and you couldn’t laugh out loud; it was particularly important if the ass was you.” A […]
I Have a Crush on My Mother’s Teen Idol | Dorothy Chan
On Hong Kong Island, I run into my mother’s childhood crush— her teen-idol-gameshow-host-on-every-girl’s-wall-celebrity- still-a-bachelor, trying on Korean glasses in the arts district once used for police housing. I pick up a pair I can’t afford, hoping for the freeze-frame of the moment— it’s like in the movies when strangers lock […]
Leading Man | Larry Narron
A crumpled flyer for the fall play in his pocket, the fresh- man who set a new record for the number of times one could be trash-canned in a year staggers slowly around the drama building at twilight, determined to master the voice of Quasimodo.
Metal | Stephen Cramer
Starved for contact, sailors traded any last scrap of metal for whatever intimacy they could find. My chest walks to the rhythm of her stride. Her scent spirals the brainstem, petaling my scalp with shivers. They were dizzy with the breeze full of frangiapani, heliconia, the burning striations of the […]
A Review of Simone White’s “Of Being Dispersed”
I maintain dominion over the crevices of myself, deep into the layers of my skin, which must never be questioned. Never doubt that these crevices extend toward an infinitely receding boundary. Come close to me to feel it. The last time I encountered Simone White was in the summer 2016 […]
Two Poems | Laton Carter
Tarantella She was unaffected by the lump on her forehead. Its size was considerable, and her father was concerned. If you see that spider, kill it, he said. Or I’ll kill it. She smiled and nodded — fathers sometimes had to kill things in order to express their affection. Everything […]
Still Thrumming in My Brain: A Review of Anthony Madrid’s “Try Never”
Try Never By Anthony Madrid Canarium Books – 2017 I first saw Anthony Madrid read alongside Michael Robbins and Paige Ackerson-Kiely in Brooklyn one summer afternoon, in a bookstore by a church undergoing repairs, scaffolding wreathing the brown steeple. I only knew of Robbins, whose book, Alien Vs. Predator (Penguin, […]
The Brooklyn Review 2017 Print Issue
We are proud to announce that The Brooklyn Review 2017 Print Issue has arrived! A compilation of pieces previously published online, the issue features cover art by Evan Paul English, an interview with Mary Gaitskill, works by Mac Wellman, Trinidad Escobar, Jessica Laser, and many other talents. Download the PDF […]
Review: The Hideout by Egon Hostovský
The Hideout, by Egon Hostovský, was first published in the U.S. in 1945, and now has been reissued by Pushkin Press in an English translation by Fern Long. The novel – really more of a novella, at roughly 120 pages – consists of one extended epistolary soliloquy-cum-confession-cum-suicide note. The writer […]
An Interview | Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill is the writer of three story collections, three novels and, most recently, a book of essays called Somebody with a Little Hammer. She was my teacher last summer at the New York State Writers’ Institute, where my classmates and I hiked, ate several kinds of fruit pie right […]
Five Poems | Ruben Rodriguez
Telling Grandma Stories At the end of Grandma Esther’s cul-de-sac, summer moon found me coins. Mexican money—round plata imbedded in roots. How do our hands find themselves soiled? Old man bursts through screen door, barking ¿Qué haces? I should have grabbed two handfuls of dirt and run. Instead, Grandma’s pursed […]
Drop-Menu Scheduling Calendar with Only One Black-Out Date | Anthony Madrid
When he took me out with his people, you could see he was ashamed of me. The next youngest guy there was twenty years older than I. Observe the parent bird strangely urging her babies from the nest. The poet’s eye is a mother bird, and the tears are jumping […]
Surface Tension | Evan Paul English
Evan Paul English was born in Meridian, Idaho. He received his BFA from University of Arizona, and earned his MFA from Pratt Institute in 2016. He has exhibited work across the United States, recently had a solo exhibition at NAPOLEON Gallery in Philadelphia, showcased work at […]