“He uttered the same last words for a year / before he changed his mind // Discreet paper-thin whorls /
or elaborate renaming days, yes // I have made each of these moths / out of the name Michael”
Two Poems | Joshua Bird
Guns & Mariah Carey | T. Abeyta
While I always had my head in a book, my Dad was busy cleaning his guns. I’m still not sure what there is to clean in a gun, but there was never a cleaner gun than his. He took them apart on a little wooden TV tray table while he […]
Bread Hands | Alicia Banaszewski
“There’s a woman meditating in the bread aisle.” Alicia Banaszewski is a freelance writer located in the Twin Cities. She writes about restaurants for Eater, book reviews for Drizzle Review, and has a piece about why everyone that hates French dressing is wrong forthcoming in the Midwesterner. Her debut poetry […]
The Generalists | Maxwell Paparella
Maxwell Paparella lives in New York City. His writing has appeared in Art Papers, BOMB Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Screen Slate, and elsewhere. More of his work can be found at www.maxwellpaparella.com. Brittany Laurent (b. 1992) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. She is a graduate of the MFA […]
Refining Device | Kim Parko
“There was a commotion out in the courtyard and I looked out my window to see Senior being attacked by the Big Bear and I ran out of the house and into the courtyard and yelled, Stop it Big Bear! and Big Bear turned to me with blood on his snout and I saw that he had taken a bite out of Senior.”
A Rare and Wonderful Man | Hilal Isler
“The restaurant was across the Dupont Circle Metro escalators. I must have barfed in their restroom, across the kitchen, at least a hundred times.”
Two Poems | Charles Kell
Charles Kell is the author of Cage of Lit Glass, chosen by Kimiko Hahn for the 2018 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. He teaches in Rhode Island. Suchi J. Pritchard is a painter and poet originally hailing from an island on the west coast who is currently an MFA candidate […]
An Interview with John Keene on the Power of Narrative From 1613 to Today
John Keene is a Distinguished Professor of English and African-American and African Studies at Rutgers-Newark, where he has served as the chair of the African-American and African Studies department since 2015. In his own words, he says, “I’m a writer, a translator, an artist, an editor, and a mentor.” He […]
Chicken Souvlaki, 1965 | Sara Brenes Akerman
The mind is a strange place. Recently I had a sex dream about movie director Peter Bogdanovich, and I don’t even have those kinds of feelings for Peter Bogdanovich, or at least I don’t think I do. Historian Robert Caro was also in the dream—the guy who’s writing the five-volume […]
BIPOC Mentorship Contest Winners!
We are very happy to announce the winners of the Brooklyn Review BIPOC Mentorship Contest! Fiction Winner – Suzette Lam Poetry Winner – Nicole Robitaille Wishing them a fruitful mentorship with Madeleine Thien and Mónica de la Torre!
An Interview | Taisia Kitaiskaia on Mystic, Moody, and Playful Things
Taisia Kitaiskaia is a Russian-American poet and writer whose work has developed an idiosyncratic mythopoetics that revels in language’s creaturely underbelly, as seen most recently in The Nightgown and Other Poems, a poetry collection published by Deep Vellum in 2020. Kitaiskaia generously answered my questions over the course of several […]
On Being Vulnerable | Karl Michael Iglesias
Karl Michael Iglesias is an actor, director, and writer originally from Milwaukee, WI. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble, he continues his exploration of verse and heightened language in the theater. His poetry can be found in Apogee, The Acentos Review, The […]
Encountering Iron | Jeri Griffith
The port city of Bilbao is good place to encounter iron. With a history steeped in steel, ship-building and the shipping industry, the tradition for iron works and iron workers runs deep. That heritage is celebrated by artist Richard Serra at Guggenheim Bilbao in his monumental work titled The Matter […]
Old New York | Chava Dimaio
The ‘new’ New York, even as new as it was, is already a memory of the past. Things are always changing. New York has not. This serves as an homage to the one thing that has stayed stable my entire life. When I grow up, I want to be just like you: Thanks New York.
Mónica de la Torre on Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979
Interview with Mónica de la Torre on Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 by Chime Lama Adding to the great efforts of anthologizing concrete poetry undertaken by Emmett Williams, Mary Ellen Solt, Victoria Bean, and Chris McCabe, among others, Mónica de la Torre and Alex Balgiu’s latest work gives us another […]
The Process | Rose Pacult
Rose Pacult is a multimedia artist and author. She has worked with Massimo De Carlo to the Bethanien Kunstquartier. Rose’s writings can be read on Wig Wag Magazine, Untoward Magazine, and Essay Daily, and appear in various books including Knowing Zasd by His Walk (Dokument Press)and Unfolded Perceptions (Grund).
Two Poems | Aiden Heung
Aiden Heung is a Chinese queer poet born and raised on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. He writes about his personal past in a Tibetan Autonomous Town and the city of Shanghai where he currently lives. His words appeared or forthcoming in The Australian Poetry Journal, Cha: An Asian […]
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