Project MUSE®: Pleiades: Literature in Context - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Pleiades: Literature in Context.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 36 (2016) through current issueLatest Articles: Pleiades: Literature in ContextTWOProject MUSE®Pleiades: Literature in Context2470-19711063-3391Latest articles in Pleiades: Literature in Context. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Contributor Notes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959248
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Kazim Ali's most recent books are Sukun: New and Selected Poems, a novel, Indian Winter, and the critical study, Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton. He is a professor of Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and the Literary Arts at the University of California, San Diego.Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books), winner of the 2025 GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A Stadler and Kundiman fellow, her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallContributor Notes2025-05-08text/htmlen-USContributor Notes2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®514162026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Failed Zuihitsu
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959249
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We need to talkSummer of 2024. The lake's surface is dark and unravelingInto the sky thick with flash and thunderThings that make me quiver:Summer of 2006. I climbed the stone staircase from 228th Street to Marble Hill AvenueKimiko Hahn wrote five books more or less informed by the form of the zuihitsu:Summer of 1979. Three hurricanes hit New York City, David, Frederic, and GloriaOne never knows where one is in time when one tries to write about the pastA forgotten Spring in 1986 or was it 1987, when Ellicott Creek flooded and we moved all the furniture from the first floor upstairsThe peak of Hahn's use of the form was in The Unbearable Heart, almost entirely in this shattered, heartbreaking prose with all its
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallFailed Zuihitsu2025-05-08text/htmlen-USFailed Zuihitsu2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®43232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Image Study
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959250
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Desire is a despot tense with presence. The hospital bed I desired empty. The nurses I decried obsolete. The eyes I dried. My eyes, my eyes could not hold a child there, only flesh so tubed I couldn't touch. Next door, a boy was intubated. When it was time, someone put up a curtain so I could not see. Though I know. The women who gathered cased their hair like me. Metonymous the cloth and curtain, swaths of women, the identical bed and mechanical whirring that held all of our heads. I desired flesh free of IVs. Fluids I decreed obsolete, defied. Next door, someone's child
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallImage Study2025-05-08text/htmlen-USImage Study2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®23912026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Jordan
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959251
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Fog on the water.Squeaking nylon. Granddad adjusts his bulk in the lawn chair and points. "There." His long fingers are a contrast to his pear-shaped body, which Gramma says is the reason he switched to overalls a decade ago. "Doesn't look right," he says, frowning at the mist. Our flat-bottomed johnboat drifts in a lazy circle, Granddad at one end and me at the other.I squint. A rolling cloud tumbles down the eddies, boiling condensation that looks more like a chemistry experiment at Ashland High than regular river haze.I lean over to look, rocking the boat. Ancient aluminum ribs protest. Granddad shifts right, to counterweight my slight body. The craft stabilizes with a tired, tinny sigh.I trail my fingers in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallJordan2025-05-08text/htmlen-USJordan2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®313702026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Fire at St. Augustine's
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959252
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Sometimes when it's already white outside, and I still haven't fallen asleep, I toss and turn and try to unearth the position that could rescue me from this sorry state, recite my prayers in hopes God will take pity on me, then feel guilty that I only seem to remember to recite them when I need something. Then I toss and turn some more.In doing so, I am extra careful not to bump into my husband. Or let my hand brush across any part of his body, or my feet make contact with his long legs. I don't remember how many years ago this became standard practice, just that one night it did. It's part of a set of unspoken rules that he, too, has come to follow. Or maybe he's the one who set them to begin with. I don't
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallFire at St. Augustine's2025-05-08text/htmlen-USFire at St. Augustine's2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®124782026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08The New Job
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959256
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Given the hard times, I felt lucky to have landed it. On the first morning, the farmer walked me into the field. I pulled on some old overalls, and he cinched a pillow case over my head, taking care to line up the eyeholes. A battered hat would keep the weather off my face, more or less. Then, he engulfed me in a bear hug. I felt embarrassed. Had I ever been touched in such a way? Something caught in my throat like a polished stone or a bright egg. "Upsy-daisy," he said, lifting me gently onto the wooden stakes. He smelled like tractor oil and bacon and empty pastures. "Well, have at it," he said. And off he went with a little wave of his hand. Time passed, as they say. The sun swung its golden lassos, and the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallThe New Job2025-05-08text/htmlen-USThe New Job2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®32882026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Ash Trees | Covid-19, and: Hospital Bed | Covid-19
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959259
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Before my father died, we'd talk on the phone every now and then. I remember sitting at the table, eating a burnt bagel. I remember my small apartment with its long, arduous windows and the raging silence of the pandemic outside. My dad was telling me about the understory – how trees create a haven for another world to survive. Sometimes, he would get very quiet, mumble something I didn't hear or can't recall now. "Oh yeah," he'd chime into my ear, returning to his next thought. We didn't talk like this often. He told me of his worry for the ash trees and their inevitable extinction. Soon, they would all be dead. The emerald ash borer burrowing S-shaped pathways in the bark, a child's finger-painting of colorful
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallAsh Trees | Covid-19, and: Hospital Bed | Covid-192025-05-08text/htmlen-USAsh Trees | Covid-19, and: Hospital Bed | Covid-192025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®40632026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Crushed Poppy Seeds
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959261
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The White House security officer halted the pink bakery box in the X-ray machine, just as Sonja expected. It wasn't customary for a journalist to bring homemade pastry to an interview with the first lady. But Sonja knew the gibanica she'd whipped up last night from scratch would be granted access, for old time's sake—if only Zala were there to intervene."Pie?" the officer asked."More of a strudel," Sonja said, glancing past the officer, hoping for a glimpse of the first lady. "A gift.""You know the protocol," the officer said, unamused.Last night, in a moment of inspiration, Sonja had decided that gibanica was the perfect bait for Zala. After Sonja made sure the miniature oven in her fifth-floor walk-up's galley
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallCrushed Poppy Seeds2025-05-08text/htmlen-USCrushed Poppy Seeds2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®427752026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Forgotten Body
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959263
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"In the Philippines the elderly [are] treated with respect, care and benevolence. The senior citizens are not detached from their families. It is their families that continue to take care of them right in their ancestral homes or in the homes of their children.""Aging is both a graceful and horrifying
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallForgotten Body2025-05-08text/htmlen-USForgotten Body2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®58952026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Hôpital des Beaux Arts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959265
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallHôpital des Beaux Arts2025-05-08text/htmlen-USHôpital des Beaux Arts2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®21092026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Walking Downtown
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959267
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It is December in Manhattan, Kansas, but there is no snow. I am walking in the cold as the acoustic version of Sound Sultan's 2006 single, Area, serenades me through my AirPods on my way back from Aggieville. In the song, Sultan sings about what it means to be away from home and advises the prodigal traveler to find his way back once the foreign land becomes too hard. For a moment in that cold weather, it felt like I had gone back in time, and I was standing outside the studio booth, watching as Sultan recorded the song with his eyes on me. At the start, Sultan's voice arrives almost unexpectedly, right after the introductory guitar chords and decidedly breaks the fourth wall as if he is not sure that the listeners
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallWalking Downtown2025-05-08text/htmlen-USWalking Downtown2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®303042026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Shimshon
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959268
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"All water has a perfect memory, and is forever trying to get back to where it was.""The collaboration between Lockheed Martin and Israeli industries is expected to exceed $4 billion."My grandmother calls me three weeks before she leaves Detroit. She offers me her wedding china and my pick of junk from the basement. In cardboard boxes, each history looks the same. In mover's hands, each one so easy to carry.Five decades before, my uncle nearly dies on the neighbor's lawn. Ketamine. Vodka. Black spots opening his vision into little spheres of elsewhere. When my grandmother finds him, she slaps his face. Carries him home. He is eighteen, vomiting, and, still, he wakes up the next morning. My grandmother's fingers
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallShimshon2025-05-08text/htmlen-USShimshon2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®66792026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08We Teach Each Other How to Pray
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959270
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Finalist, Prufer Poetry PrizeIn the beginning there was this: your palms cradling my cheeks as if scooping soil, an offering to the ancestors and to the earth that birthed us both. There are as many dialects as there are islands but I can only think of ikaw when your thumb brushes my cheek, ikaw, whose hands move slowly as if afternoon heat, ikaw, whose fingers trace the contours of my face. I lick my lips and your eyes follow the comma of my spit before your mouth descends to swallow me whole, your breath a bloodsong that fills my lungs. Oh, how alive I am, how I quiver. Your arms fold me carefully into an embrace as if I have wings. Who am I to resist, who am I to deny myself this emberkiss. In this world whose
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallWe Teach Each Other How to Pray2025-05-08text/htmlen-USWe Teach Each Other How to Pray2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®32212026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Disappearing Kingdom (A Double Nonet)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959273
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Outside Cairo Cemetery
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallDisappearing Kingdom (A Double Nonet)2025-05-08text/htmlen-USDisappearing Kingdom (A Double Nonet)2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®27612026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Door Knockers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959278
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Finalist, Prufer Poetry PrizeAfter Joan Kwon Glass's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallDoor Knockers2025-05-08text/htmlen-USDoor Knockers2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®48822026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Memento Mori, an Elegy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959279
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Islamic call to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallMemento Mori, an Elegy2025-05-08text/htmlen-USMemento Mori, an Elegy2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®61792026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Elsa's Home
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959281
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When the girls came home from their trip into the woods, one of them was carrying a shoebox.I don't know when they came back to get the shoebox. They didn't take it with them when they left. It had once held the sneakers I was wearing that day. New Balance.I could see from the kitchen window that they'd poked holes in the lid.That could only mean one thing. They were pretending they had caught something alive, something that breathed. They were playing a game where they brought an animal home, one that was small enough to fit into a shoebox.Maybe it was a lemur, or something else that doesn't live in the woods of upstate New York.They love to pretend.Would holes be necessary, though, if you put a creature in a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallElsa's Home2025-05-08text/htmlen-USElsa's Home2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®396542026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08To Tame a Monster
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959282
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My science teacher Mr. Datta, like my mother, was from India and so all of us at school called him Indy. A stern man, he was pretty darn sure that science was the most important subject in the world, and did his best to convince us of this. He was kind too, but hid his kindness, only occasionally displaying it when he sent out sunbeams through his smile. Mr. Datta would walk down the hallways, past the yellow walls and the navy blue lockers, his bald head gleaming under the lights, his hands clasped behind his back, squinting into the distance as though he could see through walls.My mother came to America from the sandy state of Rajasthan in India, and fell in love with my dad, a White man who had grown up in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallTo Tame a Monster2025-05-08text/htmlen-USTo Tame a Monster2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®303982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08County Fairs
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959283
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Winner, Prufer Poetry
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallCounty Fairs2025-05-08text/htmlen-USCounty Fairs2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®44722026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Whoopee!
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959285
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Sing, Goddess, of stuff: of the actual, not the virtual; of the tangible, however shabby. Sing of crap: X-Ray Specs, Amazing Sea-Monkeys, The Ventrilo (Throw your voice!), dribble glasses, snapping gum, cigarette loads, Polaris Nuclear Sub (Over 7 feet long! Big enough for 2 kids!), the spy pocket telescope, invisible ink, flash paper, How to be a Handcuff King and Mystery Man, stink bombs, Practical Prospecting (The Pocket Manual of Treasure Finding), itching powder, a ramjet engine that runs on gasoline (Safe indoors and out!). Sing of a boys' world, wonder-filled, in comic book ads jam-packed with tiny type.Those ads belong to the past. Johnson Smith & Co., the novelty company that placed so many of them, is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallWhoopee!2025-05-08text/htmlen-USWhoopee!2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®74552026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08The Door
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959286
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—After Nikolai Fomich Kalugin and Svetlana Alexievich: The latter shares the former's primary account in Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallThe Door2025-05-08text/htmlen-USThe Door2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®30932026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08In the House of Wolves, a Machine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959288
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The dog behaves strangely now that Lance is not around.Stephanie the trainer says this is perfectly natural and that with time, the behavior should heal itself—particularly since border collies are known for nothing if not their cleverness. But he is lonely and old and sick to boot, and it will require commitment on my part, and on my daughter Yume's, too. Already there are signs of progress: the dog heels for me, though he does so only when we practice inside the house, and only on the carpet.Stephanie is sinewy and tall, her skin brindled from the sun. We are the same age but she looks much older, her face lined with the residue of tragedy, her fingers trembling from her morning coffee. She addresses the dog as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallIn the House of Wolves, a Machine2025-05-08text/htmlen-USIn the House of Wolves, a Machine2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®439482026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08On Translating Five Polish Poets
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959290
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Represented here are a range of poetic voices from an over 85-year span, beginning with the untitled 1934 poem of the stateless Polish-language poet Zuzanna Ginczanka and her "Firebird" from 1937, and ending with "Gift of Attrition" ("Dar ścierania"), a Justyna Bargielska poem from her 2019 collection Child from a Donation (Dziecko z darów). Presented out of chronological sequence, these ten poems by five poets—Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), Tadeusz Różewicz (1921-2014), Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012), Michał Dziuda (1961-), and Justyna Bargielska (1977-)—offer an array of poetic sensibilities and some common preoccupations. This essay grows out of my dual desire to locate these poets and bring the translation
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallOn Translating Five Polish Poets2025-05-08text/htmlen-USOn Translating Five Polish Poets2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®194642026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Second Self
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959291
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Finalist, Prufer Poetry
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallSecond Self2025-05-08text/htmlen-USSecond Self2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®46982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Family
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959295
<p></p>
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallFamily2025-05-08text/htmlen-USFamily2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®55492026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Prayer to the [God]1 of Chaos, and: Turkzilla
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959296
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Let [me]3 not question [the]4 existence of plastic six-pack rings. Rather let me lovingly snip the silver-white circles with my kitchen shears before disposal, thus [to]6 prevent the seabirds from strangling, thus to [grant]2 them a more gradual demise from chewing the nipples of my children's old baby bottles, [and]21 bathing in the fragments of my husband's used condoms.Let me not grieve for the car [I]19 rear-ended, the cupcakes I forgot to send to school, the coworker I called by the wrong name. Let me but recall the hours I have spent crying to my mother on my cellphone before perpetrating [the]17 aforenamed mistakes, walking alone—but for my mother's sad, unreachable voice—on dark cul-de-sacs starlit with the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallPrayer to the [God]1 of Chaos, and: Turkzilla2025-05-08text/htmlen-USPrayer to the [God]1 of Chaos, and: Turkzilla2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®127442026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Summer Salad
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959298
<p></p>
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallSummer Salad2025-05-08text/htmlen-USSummer Salad2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®17672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Part of the therapy becomes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959304
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identifying which parts of myself are me and which are parts.The brain, for example, is a part: but it is also a tyrant, perhaps also an intersection. As in when the brain tells you to fear something, it is trying to protect you. The heart is an abstraction, like me, but its flesh is a part, its work a part.The anus, blessedly, is both, like the vagina, like the throat.The tongue is a part, though the words it makes are mine.Whose fault is it, then?—It, in this case, refers to that which brings you to therapy, which could be the brain, or else the self, or else——Part of the therapy becomes recognizing the multiple inherent problems with the word fault: a fracture, which naturally happens to parts. Like the leg, a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallPart of the therapy becomes2025-05-08text/htmlen-USPart of the therapy becomes2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®30752026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Sonnet
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959306
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In the room with cherry-stained wood floors and narrow windows, in the house with the big oak tree towering over the garage, on the 7th day in July, in the humid sweat of summer, we fed him the ice cream, the whiskey, the eggplant, the roti, the malai kofta, the gulab jamun, the prayer, the phone, the words, the song. We fed him a spoon full of our hearts, our lips, our tongues and he held them in his jaw for nine long nights, carried them firm as he held tight to our hands. The coins on his eyes, the white towels soaked in cold water, his mouth full of words wiped clean. When the dead speak, the heat breaks, the heart breaks, in the days that follow, poems begin to collect in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallSonnet2025-05-08text/htmlen-USSonnet2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®25372026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08One therapist says that black men are wont to disappear like that
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959307
<p></p>
Finalist, Prufer Poetry
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallOne therapist says that black men are wont to disappear like that2025-05-08text/htmlen-USOne therapist says that black men are wont to disappear like that2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®30602026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Prayers for the Paranoid, and: Phenakistoscope
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959308
<p></p>
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959339">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallPrayers for the Paranoid, and: Phenakistoscope2025-05-08text/htmlen-USPrayers for the Paranoid, and: Phenakistoscope2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®49312026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959313
<p></p>
Underneath Istanbul, lie 336 columns out of which one weeps. The Column of Tears is found in a corner gathering humidity into drench, its surface carved with an arabesque design mimicking tears. There are no facts found, but a myth tells us the pillar commemorates the slaves that cried and died in the construction of the Basilica Cistern. Their spirits now hold onto this column and weep. What moves me are not them but the living. The inventors of cisterns, columns, myths and spirits, holding onto absence and its desperation for materialization, discovering inane grief through objects to comprehend their own personal language for mourning, and the human irresistible desire for witniss, to create altars, rituals
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallEditor's Note2025-05-08text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®61952026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Do not saw the air too much with your hands, thus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959314
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In Philadelphia the other day I walked past a woman rearranging a dead bird on the sidewalk so she could photograph it.Maybe I've taught Hamlet too many times by now, but boy do I spend a lot of time thinking about artifice.I don't want to hear about the exciting new field of prompt engineers.The spiders: we befriend them. Sure, sometimes one or the other of us wakes up with a welt and some light allergic reaction, but at least we don't have flies.Oh, Hamlet, what shall I do?The spiders are thumbnail-sized and translucent reddish-brown and we let them drink from our shower.Later, when I opened my phone, dead birds poured into my lap.Oh, how I want to renounce my stupidity.Not this, by no means, that I bid you
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallDo not saw the air too much with your hands, thus2025-05-08text/htmlen-USDo not saw the air too much with your hands, thus2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®52362026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08The Syntax of Thursday
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959319
<p></p>
for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallThe Syntax of Thursday2025-05-08text/htmlen-USThe Syntax of Thursday2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®35512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Of Things With Buttons
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959323
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Runner-Up, Prufer Poetry PrizeShirts. White shirts. Crisp white shirts. Crisp, white, linen shirts. School uniform shirts. Striped shirts. Tailored shirts. Imaginary boyfriend shirts. Dress shirts. Custom made shirts with embroidered initials. Shirts your brother wore; shirts that made you wish you were a boy. Shirts you never got to choose. Shirts stolen from your dad's closet.The first walkman Sony made. A steel blue and silver cassette player with large buttons that your dad brought you from Japan. Before you ever heard of portable music. Before you knew you knew how to listen. Your first adventures in shutting the world out and eavesdropping at will.A baby-blue-wall-phone in Ammi's room. Phones that replaced
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallOf Things With Buttons2025-05-08text/htmlen-USOf Things With Buttons2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®40162026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Semiotics, and: yhtrowtsurtnU m'I dloT gnieB nopU
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959326
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July 22, 2024with a line from Catalogue of Grief by Aria
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallSemiotics, and: yhtrowtsurtnU m'I dloT gnieB nopU2025-05-08text/htmlen-USSemiotics, and: yhtrowtsurtnU m'I dloT gnieB nopU2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®84762026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08As Trees
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959330
<p></p>
Mark
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallAs Trees2025-05-08text/htmlen-USAs Trees2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®37102026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Nine Steps To Be Queer (and Accused) of a Storm
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959332
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Finalist, Prufer Poetry PrizeCock head to see a slate Floridian sky growl.(Winds may rip royal poinciana crowns.)He holds my hand to the sanctuary lamp.Find the rut I lay down in Flamingo sawgrass.(Crocodiles may submerge in howling rains.)We fight like breeding Ona White Angus bulls!Hold me tight, white knuckling the good book.(Key Largo's rhizome nights may draw blood.)He wails like a limpkin afraid to take my girth.Push me into the nettles of Snake Bight Trail.(His eclipse plumage may last the night.)He mewls like a clown when I flood his gates.Ask for help to see me fall like sycamore bark.(His old knees may try to give ground.)We cling to each other like seahorse men.Parse my words to discover what's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallNine Steps To Be Queer (and Accused) of a Storm2025-05-08text/htmlen-USNine Steps To Be Queer (and Accused) of a Storm2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®38122026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Heirloom
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959333
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The doctor calls: genetic mutation. It is summer. She is not a doctor, actually. She's the lady who delivers hard news. How to consider what can't be changed. I am more like my grandmother each day. We form an alliance across the beyond, wading towards each other in dreams, as if we're meant to be one. She died when I was zero. Cooing in the church choir, then hairless, then gone. Because of the gene. She had curls, now I do. It's encoded in my dad, but there are no consequences for men. No point of betrayal. Womanhood is pain but they're going to take mine out. They're going to sew me shut like painters making brushstrokes. Depletion a horizon. My cavity the canvas, tethered to a warm drip. The MRI machine is so
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallHeirloom2025-05-08text/htmlen-USHeirloom2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®30592026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Watch, Father
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959335
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"They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallWatch, Father2025-05-08text/htmlen-USWatch, Father2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®67832026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08A Note on Molly Brodak's Alone in Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959336
<p></p>
In 2018, Molly Brodak won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for prose, which she used to travel to Poland and the Ukraine to visit the site of the concentration camp where her father was conceived. This trip would result in Alone in Poland, a memoir about that trip, and more particularly, an exploration of the concepts of national identity, borders and territory, the growing similarities between Russia and America, and Molly's own fraught concept of familial identity. The manuscript failed to find a publisher, however, "regretfully" rejected by a variety of editors who claimed it wasn't clear how to market its content. Not long after, Molly would take her own life in March 2020, never having seen her work
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallA Note on Molly Brodak's Alone in Poland2025-05-08text/htmlen-USA Note on Molly Brodak's Alone in Poland2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®25262026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Dunbar
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959337
<p></p>
As the bulldozers began tearing away the insides of 1018 U Street N.W. in Washington D.C., Bernice Upshur reached in her purse, pulled out a Kleenex, and wiped away tears. Moments before, the mayor of the city, David Green, a politician dedicated to making the city a world class, modern, international city, addressed a small crowd of people who had gathered for some ceremonial last words. Several other government officials stood beside Mayor Green as the contractors and workers waited patiently behind the gathering for the moment to pass."While this building is being transformed, we will never forget the great things that happened here," Mayor Green told those who had come, "great moments in this city's history
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallDunbar2025-05-08text/htmlen-USDunbar2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®372432026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08From Alone in Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959338
<p></p>
The bells of St. Mary's reached me in the library. My eyes unfocused from the page and went nowhere in particular as I listened to their icy, illegible tones. I stayed like that for a while, just listening and staring out, no one in the library to notice me.I put on my headphones and left the library, lured toward the clanging emanating from the church a few blocks away: a thin, pale grey cathedral facing a long square in the center of Katowice lined with new restaurants and bars in the process of filling up with early evening crowds. One heavy door was open and I peered in shyly, afraid I might be interrupting something, but the church was completely empty. Dark old incense smell, cold cavern. Cream white vaulted
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallFrom Alone in Poland2025-05-08text/htmlen-USFrom Alone in Poland2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®471512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08Days of Birth and Death
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959339
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Mrs. Tufegian was cursed with a long life's blessings.Of three children, she had already buried one, her first and favorite, and excommunicated the other, her last and least liked. That left her middle boy, a good son, accountable and dependable if a little standoffish, mixed temperaments inherited from his father, Mrs. Tufegian's dear husband dead a decade.From her perch seven storeys in the sky, Mrs. Tufegian inhaled the smoky scent of winter burning into spring and considered the day ahead, a small coffee cup beside her, unflipped, unread. A transplant from Van Nuys and Hollywood and Armenia and Damascus, she peered down on green Glendale and spotted the Jaguar, her approaching escort like a dollop of cream
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/682/image/coversmallDays of Birth and Death2025-05-08text/htmlen-USDays of Birth and Death2025-05-082025TWOProject MUSE®312232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-05-08