Project MUSE®: The Massachusetts Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Massachusetts Review.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 56 (2015) through current issueLatest Articles: The Massachusetts ReviewTWOProject MUSE®The Massachusetts Review2330-04850025-4878Latest articles in The Massachusetts Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986476
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SPRING 2026 ISN'T AN EASY READ, but given the times in which we are living, it shouldn't be. Regarding "The First Spring," Emma De Lisle's speaker opens, "It hurt," while Jacques J. Rancourt's "Five Wounds" concludes, "I let that hurt suspend me." The Marxist philosopher, literary critic, and beloved teacher Fredric Jameson, who departed this world a little over a year ago, said that "history is what hurts." Here, Charlie Clark's speaker adds: "Hurt is hard and does not translate well / But let me try."If this is an issue that heralds spring, it understands that beginnings can only be midwifed—painfully, haltingly, sometimes glacially slow—from deep and honest reckonings with loss. It also reckons with how—from
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallIntroduction2026-04-01text/htmlen-USIntroduction2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®43922026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Three Tryers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986478
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THE TRIP WAS to Monterey, because two of us loved Steinbeck, and Camilo loved driving."We should try not to be boastful," I said."About what?" Enrique said."About how pleasant this is."Camilo laughed. He turned onto the Great Highway."Who's boasting?" Enrique said."I'm just worried that we're boasting about how pleasant this is. I hope those people on the beach know that we're trying to stay humble. We're not trying to boast about the sky and the sand.""It's their sky and sand too.""I know. It still feels boastful."We drove past the beach and through the hills. We talked about many things, and even when we got excited about something, we still spoke quietly so as not to be boastful. It was a long drive, and life
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallThree Tryers2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThree Tryers2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®114172026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-012, and: 3
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986479
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My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmall2, and: 32026-04-01text/htmlen-US2, and: 32026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®63462026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Is There Love in Gaza?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986480
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EDITOR'S NOTE:This essay was written and edited on the author's phone using WhatsApp, after his laptop was obliterated in the September 10, 2024, bombing of the Gaza displacement camp—a day when the helicopter missiles took his tools, but not his voice.FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS, the genocide has stolen the future from Gaza's youth, intertwining days and nights with no direction and no promise of progress. I should be in my university classrooms now, attending lectures. I should be building my life, looking for a job, dreaming of marriage, dancing at my own wedding with the people I love.But here I am today, two years later, and all I have done is carry buckets of water from supply trucks, struggle to light fires for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallIs There Love in Gaza?2026-04-01text/htmlen-USIs There Love in Gaza?2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®230642026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Go Ahead, Pinch Me
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986481
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WE'RE AT THE SHEPHERD, crammed into a red leather booth, the seats cracked and flaking like old skin stretched too thin. The ceiling sags above us with old wooden beams—crooked and dark, like ancient bones ready to snap. The foggy lights hang low, casting everything in a yellow haze. The air reeks of beer and sweat, thick with a jittering buzz, awful singing, tables slamming, and crowds shouting and celebrating. Tonight, everyone is extra rowdy with us beating Cambridge in the Boat Race, as if we've never done it before.I don't usually mind the Saturday night noise. I like being in the mess of it all. It's the good kind of distraction, almost calming. The kind you can lose yourself in for a while. But tonight, I'm
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallGo Ahead, Pinch Me2026-04-01text/htmlen-USGo Ahead, Pinch Me2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®331712026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Bulbul
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986482
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HE WAS BORN at the bazaar.Well, not exactly.He was born at a maternity hospital two stops from the bazaar.His father was a seller of clay whistles.The contractions started around lunchtime. The father asked his wife to hold on until at least half were sold. And sit here, in the meantime. Yes, right here, behind the counter.So she sat behind the counter, attracting notice with her deep breathing. His father bargained correctly. The clay whistles were quickly bought up.His father always bargained correctly.Closer to evening, he sat his wife in a cart, harnessed himself to it, and took off for the maternity hospital. The cart bounced on the uneven ground. With a clay fish pressed between his lips he let out a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallBulbul2026-04-01text/htmlen-USBulbul2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®374972026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Science College
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986485
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NEITHER OF US CHOOSES the other the way people here usually do: clubs, classes, sororities, shared interests, proximity most of all. But we have the same unshaven legs and forty-day-old undercuts and hairlines we edge up with Venus razor blades meant to smooth an armpit away until it is no longer pit, just a further extension of an arm. Never mind that she is fat and I am not; that she has perfect vision while I've worn glasses since the second grade; that she wears ripped denim vests while I prefer OBEY, RVCA, and other Urban Outfitters knockoffs. There is something essentially similar about us, a category our peers agree that we and no one else belong to.We circle around one another during orientation as we
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallThe Science College2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Science College2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®348802026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Daughters, Plural
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986487
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I HAVE OFTEN THOUGHT about names. I have asked myself how something so arbitrary, so extrinsic, could be so important. After all, it's just a name, but there's a whole everything in that name.I chose two names for my daughters, Agata and Livia, Livia and Agata, two names that sounded good together. Not everyone liked them, especially Agata; some people thought it was a strange name, and I also felt a bit strange when I said it. It was a peculiar one, Agata, but it was my favorite. It felt wrong to have one; but I did. I gave that name to the baby on the right, the one who moved all the time––"the little rascal," they called her at the hospital. Of the two, only she could be seen in the ultrasounds: she had eclipsed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallDaughters, Plural2026-04-01text/htmlen-USDaughters, Plural2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®316282026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986491
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THE THING IS, Walker said, you can't actually burn down a golf course. A golf course is a landscape. "Burn down" is a figure of speech. He—Walker and Rachel and Dave Shapiro and the Deadhead who called himself Skippy, though he was identified in court as Mark Bradshaw of Takoma Park—poured a perimeter line of vodka in the dry grass and used bits of torn-up Bethesda–Chevy Chase graduation programs as tinder. At the time Walker described it as a "controlled burn." It was between two and three in the morning, according to the police, and the fire raced across the grass faster than he had predicted, a livid seam across the seventh hole, where the sprinklers were broken. There was a line of rhododendron bushes, just
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallThe Seven Habits of Highly Effective People2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Seven Habits of Highly Effective People2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®140112026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Selected Work
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986494
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Holy, 2025a nora doll with a felice dolls head, resinDurden and Ray Room Box, 2025mixed media (cardboard, various clays, fabrics, sewing, painting, drawing),24˝w × 12˝h × 18˝dDurden and Ray Room Box, 2025mixed media (cardboard, various clays, fabrics, sewing, painting, drawing),24˝w × 12˝h × 18˝dJennifer O'Connell, who works under the artist names Jennifer Strings and Known As Myself, is a polymathic artist and educator whose work explores the psychological landscapes of memory, embodiment, and myth. Drawing from personal history and an expansive multidisciplinary practice, she creates imagery that moves between the intimate and the archetypal. Her work spans stop-motion animation, watercolor painting
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallSelected Work2026-04-01text/htmlen-USSelected Work2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®79612026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Let's Sing Ghazals at Night
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986496
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OKAY. GRAB MY HAND. Let's get you out of this piece of paper. Yes, I know, it's tough. Breaking free is always tricky. But don't give up. Freedom is worth it. Look around at this forest in the dark. See how merrily the fireflies dance? And how calmly the crickets chirp in chorus? Join me out here. Paper rarely makes good prison houses. At least, nothing compared to the secret detention facilities. Here, I can still see you in the shadowy darkness. Know that you exist, even if only on paper as a sketch I made of myself. Guess what? We, the stateless folks, didn't even exist on paper. That is, if we ever forgot that we were still alive in those dark and fetid cells, we would stop existing altogether. In that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallLet's Sing Ghazals at Night2026-04-01text/htmlen-USLet's Sing Ghazals at Night2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®64892026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Scene, and: Self Something
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986498
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POET'S NOTE:These two poems are from a sequence titled "Some
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallScene, and: Self Something2026-04-01text/htmlen-USScene, and: Self Something2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®47372026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Poem Penetrated by Derek Jarman
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986499
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after Diane Seussas I sweat it out in the early hours, a "guilty victim" of the scourge, I want to bear witness how happy I am, and will be until the day I die, that I was part of the hated sexual revolution; and that I don't regret a single step or encounter I made in that time; and if Iwrite in the future with regret, it will be a reflection of a temporary
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallPoem Penetrated by Derek Jarman2026-04-01text/htmlen-USPoem Penetrated by Derek Jarman2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®48682026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Preparation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986501
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GRANDPA LAY SOLEMNLY in the hospital bed, dressed in his pale blue cotton shirt and navy jacket. He was drowning in the sea of the lackluster bleach-smelling fabric, his head so small in contrast to the wide shoulder-padded shell of that jacket. We were grateful for the outfit, or at least I was. The shirt collar saved us the gruesomeness of witnessing his scrawny neck, collar bones protruding and eager to escape the jaundiced crinkly skin. Grandpa's hand was almost as cold as Dad's had been when Dad was dying, but his forehead remained stubbornly hot. The doctor said he was too fragile for antibiotics; the safest way to cool him down was to do it physically. While wiping down his neck and shoulders with an icy
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallPreparation2026-04-01text/htmlen-USPreparation2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®436242026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Setting the Features
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986502
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AFTER I LEFT, I realized the only time I ever stepped foot inside Clark's house was for his viewing. Although, when he was alive, Clark didn't spend much time there either. He lived on the edge of town, just beyond the park, in a beige split-level set behind a lawn that looked like sea glass. Hardly the Georgian-style manors one would see the deeper they traveled into the countryside, but still far enough away from Main Street that it spared his parents the horror of being considered townies.His family stood in a row beside his casket—his mother, his father, his older twin brothers. I shook each of their hands, offered my condolences. None of them looked sad or angry or particularly inconsolable. They looked
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallSetting the Features2026-04-01text/htmlen-USSetting the Features2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®187532026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986503
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suhbat aflatuni (Evgeny Abdullaev) is a writer, translator, and scholar born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1971. He is the author of three books of poetry, seven novels, and a short story collection, and a winner of the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize, the Oktiabr Magazine Award, the Russian "Premiia" prize, and the Triumph Prize. He serves on the editorial boards of the literary magazines Zvezda Vostoka and Druzhba Narodov. In the first decade of Uzbek independence he helped to found the "Tashkent School," a movement of writers asserting poetic difference from Russia within the Russian language. His poems and stories have been translated into English, French, Korean, and Polish. He lives in Tashkent.souri ahmadlou is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/660/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2026-04-01text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®161072026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01