(It began with a disagreement. We dithered over Fortinbras, Claudius, who of them made the better Prince: Reference Machiavelli, read strategy, but Hamlet’s line? . . . snuffed out.) With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.–Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins […]
Issue 80
Nathalie Anderson: Review of Teresa Leo’s The Halo Rule
Teresa Leo’s The Halo Rule centers on a paradigmatic situation familiar in our culture: the woman who ventures to open herself to love, to a man, to commitment, and the man who holds back, holds out, withholds. The archetype embodying this paradigm features Narcissus – so fixated in self-regard, in self-absorption, that the woman whom […]
Francine Witte: Trust
Sarah had given up on trust. Then she met Harley. He was so oozy with charm, she stopped being careful. He would tell her how pretty she looked in her print dress even though she was wearing a pantsuit. And just as she was about to correct him, he would give her his dazzle smile, […]
Joseph Rogers: Go Children Slow
There are a few different routes from here; it all depends who’s in the car with you. Say it’s her—she’s probably beside you on the front seat of a ’78 Impala with all your friends’ initials carved into the maroon foam on the roof. Her initials are right next to yours. They were the first […]
Andrew Palmer: Homage
A series of conversations about breaking stuff. “I really don’t want to talk about this.” “Fine. Okay,” said Kate. This was just last night. Long silence for a phone conversation, maybe ten seconds, maybe even fifteen or twenty. Not twenty. But long. Maybe fifteen. “But,” he said, “we’re gonna talk about it anyway, aren’t we,” […]
R.G. O’Reilly: Father Image
Timmy and his younger brother Chip waited at the door of the Brooklyn Gardens shuttle bus. The bus leaned to one side, hissed and threw open its doors. “Thanks, mister!” they yelled to the driver as they jumped to the sidewalk. Chip loosened the necktie noose that had been strangling him through the Mass. “Why […]