Category: Essays

Gunpowder changed everything. Curtain walls of stone gave way, literally, with the shock of shot. Of course, it was Michelangelo who turned Florence into a star. Leonardo’s Palmanova became the ideal city ... Read More

“But he is mine. And yours. Like it or not, he’s our brother. They’ll never catch me betraying him.” —Antigone. My brother Mike died while incarcerated in Jacksonville, Florida on December 23, 2021. He was found in his cell, alone, at 3:24pm ... Read More

As a teenager, my favorite band was The Cure. This was pre-Radiohead, pre-Editors, before bands—even alternative bands—tended to be literary. Yet The Cure turned out songs like “Killing an Arab,” based on The Stranger by Albert Camus, and “How Beautiful You Are,” an echo of Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Eyes ... Read More

I don’t want to be all playing into stereotypes here, but I’m on my period and everything is pissing me off. From my dog who selectively understands English and won’t stop whining at the squirrels to my long-distance boyfriend/affairmate who I haven’t even talked to today because I’m getting frustrated ... Read More

No matter how long a journey is, and though it begins with eagerness and excitement, my heart aches the night before going back home for the narrow streets I had walked on for many days; the harmony of the unknown language, stores, coffees and restaurants, the rustle of women’s skirts ... Read More

A tiny green blueberry. Crunchy. It’s eaten by mistake. It was mixed in that package of frozen berries that I’ll pretty much eat by the pound. I poured a handful of the frozen berries into my glass and poured two shots of vodka on it. This makes the alcohol sweeten ... Read More

About 1937. We had a large card with numbers on it which we put in the window to tell the iceman we wanted ice. The number on top of the card showed him what size block to bring in. When our ice was just about all gone, we put the card ... Read More

The first time was in the fifth grade, where I sat in the back of the room, with a large window behind me. One late-winter day, I heard a shrill whistling. Startled, I made a dramatic jump to the window. While not outgoing, I liked getting attention, and I got ... Read More

When I was nineteen, I moved to Montreal both for school and in the hope that the city would be for me what Paris was for the Lost Generation. That moveable feast, to quote Hemingway; that Babylon to be revisited, to quote Fitzgerald instead. Unlike Hemingway or Fitzgerald, I wasn't ... Read More

I was in Pasadena, California, looking after a cat for a friend of mine. What I had initially embraced as a writing retreat quickly became a nightmare. I was trying to write at a desk in the living room when my back went into spasm, causing me worrying pain. Trying ... Read More

In fall 1985, I was sitting on a bench at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam staring at his View of Auvers, 1890. There were tears in my eyes, causing a young woman seated next to me to whisper to me, “It’s wonderful to see a man so moved by ... Read More

Everyone has embarrassing dating stories. Some of us just have more than others. I have enough for an entire book. Among the highlights: following a break-up with my high school girlfriend, the first girl I asked out in college was a lesbian. In fact, my entire college dating resume involved ... Read More

“I’m thinking about making a sourdough starter.” I said this in front of my mom in hopes that she would make the sourdough starter and then share some with me. Just like millions of other people spending the majority of my time at home since the pandemic started, I thought ... Read More

If you’re ever on the campus of the University of Minnesota, peek over the Washington Avenue Bridge. It’s about 70 feet down to the Mississippi. When I studied American poetry there, it would occasionally come up that the great John Berryman had ended his life by jumping off that bridge ... Read More

A few days ago, I received a group email sent to the surviving members of my undergraduate college class announcing—boasting—that the class gift from our sixtieth reunion had been the primary contribution for a golf training facility at Rutgers University. A photograph of the plaque honoring our support accompanied the ... Read More

Last year I sat in a room darkened by automatic shades where collections of pixels were cast over my head to the wall-swallowing screen in front of me. I think there were nine of us in total, not counting John, charting the spectrum of sleep deprivation when we took our ... Read More

A black reverend represents Georgia and for white fucks, this is yet another loss for the Confederacy. After all, the senator’s surname features the root word “war.” The whitelash was as predictable as Brady’s MAGA cap. In the wake of the Grand Antebellum Party’s collapse, a young white man harvested ... Read More

Dear Traumatic Brain Injury (T.B.I.): Thank you for applying to the position of ‘what happened on Susan’s way home on May 5’ here at The Rest of Susan’s Life, Inc. We do really appreciate that you considered us, when we know there are a lot of places taking applications. We ... Read More

He sits stooped in bed, scowling. “I look like a corpse.” Robert’s face and neck are disfigured from surgery and radiation. His body is bruised and bone skinny. A tracheostomy tube juts from his neck, a feeding tube from his belly. It is cancer; too many cigarettes for too many ... Read More

Using Zoom while living under the Covid-19 quarantine caused me to face something that I don’t face most of the time: my face. There it was, always looking back at me from my laptop screen. Even when I’m brushing my teeth or shaving, I only scan portions of it to ... Read More

I know from teaching literature to teenagers for a generation that this latest bunch are not naturally romantic, and so the earnest attitude that typifies modernist American literature can be a tough sell. The raw poignant cynicism of the current pop cultural rights of passage, like Breaking Bad or Orange ... Read More

A tall, lush, evergreen forest. The sound of an airplane flying overhead. Bird calls echoing through the forest. Moss sleeves on tree branches. Moss coats on trunks. Massive ferns at their feet. A long dirt trail. The sound of boots walking on the path. Maple leaves scattered all over. The ... Read More

Ruth Kavanagh is a former practicing defense litigation attorney. After being diagnosed as a young adult with a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer in 2014, she became a fierce advocate for brain cancer awareness. She is an award-winning public motivational speaker, fundraiser, and event planner. Ruth has also served ... Read More

My younger brother and I are sitting in the waiting room at Arbour Hospital in Jamaica Plain, hoping to talk with Mom during visiting hours, but she’s refusing to meet and blames us for being a captive in this mental hospital, in this world, at this time. We want her ... Read More

Lux Lisbon’s on the roof again. She crawls out every night. She went up day one, smoking cloves after sex, and the neighbor boys watch through their telescope. Few books worm into my brain as Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides does. I first read it in the months after college ... Read More

A few weeks ago, as I walked through the front door of the detox house I’m a medical assistant at, I noticed what appeared to be a familiar character languishing on his old couch haunt, but I couldn’t be sure, as he was listless and downcast, and our eyes did ... Read More

She's voter polling me for Arizona and the next election. I tell her “I agree…” when I say I believe in immigration leading to citizenship and I want to put more money into education and marihuana laws. I tell her I take care of my mother and I make $3.50 ... Read More

Art today is governed by aesthetic anarchy regulated and overseen by a Babel of critics whose observations are, as Barnett Newman pointed out, “as useful to an artist as ornithology is to a bird.” The revolution began years ago when academic technique, fidelity to nature, and "beauty" were abandoned in ... Read More

After attending school for many, many, many years, I have come to the realization that some of the theory I have been assigned to read can be applied at home—my childhood home. It has occurred to me that I haven’t given my parents enough credit concerning the methodology of discipline and ... Read More

What do a Bendel bonnet and a Shakespeare sonnet have in common besides rhyme? Throw in Mickey Mouse. No, it’s not a riddle manqué or a question rejected by the Miller Analogies test. As many probably know already, these are just a few of the superlative attributes applied to the ... Read More

Trapped in quarantine purgatory, my partner and I, like two stereotypical GenXers, decided to escape to a galaxy far, far away. As we watched all three Star Wars trilogies, I was transported to the mellow days of the 70s in fog-drenched Monterey when my hair shone naturally golden and my ... Read More

The smell of sickness saturates the room. A vomit basin, half full, lies on Mary’s lap. Her thin lips quiver. “I can’t eat or drink anything.” She shakes an unused cup of melting ice in her right hand; a tangle of tubes and wires jostle. She grabs an ice cube ... Read More

I live in a world of spirit. Each day I am sober is miraculous and terrifying. Each day I am sober should not be. I am a ghost who walks and breathes. Adam Fout writes nonfiction and speculative fiction. He is a graduate of the 2020 Odyssey Writing Workshop and has ... Read More