Project MUSE®: Subtropics - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Subtropics.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USIssue 19 (2015) through current issueLatest Articles: SubtropicsTWOProject MUSE®Subtropics2471-45261559-0704Latest articles in Subtropics. Feed provided by Project MUSE®100% Real and Painted from Life
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979978
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Anyone under thirty, which I was at the time, would have thought him old. He was probably in his late fifties, but looked a decade older—gray, balding, slow-moving and thin. The few people who knew him by name—two other residents that I knew of on his floor of the Upper West Side mansion-turned-rat's-warren of single-room residencies that he called home, and the clerk at the bodega on the corner—called him "Mikey," but had no idea what his last name was. That privilege belonged to his sister, his only living relative, whom he had not seen in a decade of Christmases, and to his social worker, whom he saw as little as he possibly could, just enough to keep his SSI checks coming. As for diagnosis, he was, I gather, an
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmall100% Real and Painted from Life2026-01-21text/htmlen-US100% Real and Painted from Life2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®77782026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Mining-Bees Nest the Grass, and: Rilke at the Piano (1886), and: Worry, and: Findings, and: The Body After Death
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979979
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I worry I committed a crime but did not get caught. I worry I did not commit a crime but will be falsely accused and sent to jail. The first is the water dream of accumulation. The second is the fire dream of purification. In another dream you and I were dancing after many years apart. You were married to a woman with grotesque, heart-shaped red hair. Your wife was younger than you, while I was older than I am now. I woke up thinking I had children when I went to bed, last night. But now as I open my eyes, I have never had a child. Sitting up, breathless. Where have I put my child? What a hoarder I am. I even worry for a person who has never been.
My dead mother's reading glasses follow the contour of her face:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallMining-Bees Nest the Grass, and: Rilke at the Piano (1886), and: Worry, and: Findings, and: The Body After Death2026-01-21text/htmlen-USMining-Bees Nest the Grass, and: Rilke at the Piano (1886), and: Worry, and: Findings, and: The Body After Death2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®76372026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Windows Shut, Curtains Closed
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979980
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I waste the first hour of the day trying to decide whether the manuscript says traduttore or traditore. The word blurs after trad, sharpens to tore. I have never seen the chewed original. The scan's a Rorschach, the noun digitally smudged. There's the old Italian adage—traduttore, traditore—about translation being a betrayal, but this is one word. Outside the window I'm forbidden to open, feral parrots cackle in the palm leaves: trad-u-ttor-e. A lone subwoofer thump-buzzes down Van Nuys Boulevard in 4/4 time: trad-i-tor-e.But I'm not supposed to touch the curtains.Before the guard arrives, my only friend in this world is Gaius Valerius Procillus, favorite interpreter to Julius Caesar during the Gallic wars, a head
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallWindows Shut, Curtains Closed2026-01-21text/htmlen-USWindows Shut, Curtains Closed2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®285532026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Deviants
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979982
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Ellen met the boy during a hard time—not an excuse, but necessary context. Her father-in-law had just died after a protracted illness, and her husband, John, who'd had a complicated relationship with his father, was not handling the loss well. Maybe grief was the cause, or simply the excuse, for trouble that had been long brewing. John was drinking too much; that was part of it. The tang of liquor emanated from his pores, and there were bottles buried in the recycling, clinking whenever Ellen wheeled the bin out to the curb. She'd been sleeping badly herself, waking before dawn after harrowing nights in twisted sheets, always too hot or too cold. There was an ache in her legs that she'd realized was varicose veins
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallDeviants2026-01-21text/htmlen-USDeviants2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®329112026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21How to Pine, and: How to Regret Nothing
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979983
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After Edith Piaf who set her memories to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallHow to Pine, and: How to Regret Nothing2026-01-21text/htmlen-USHow to Pine, and: How to Regret Nothing2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®57112026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21One Frame More
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979985
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She has always existed only in certain spaces. Leaning over the kitchen sink, attached to a phone cord. In the driver's seat of the station wagon, schlepping me to a floor hockey game. The voice from downstairs calling my name.My mother was never on the family room floor, where my sisters and I spent our childhood playing War or Go Fish or Gin Rummy, the only card games we knew. My father didn't join in either, but he had the built-in excuse of having to rush out the door before sunrise. Though he lived a mysterious life, it was my mother who spoke in riddles.Once I was there on the floor all alone, cleaning up a structurally flawed house of cards, and my mother came in through the kitchen doorway and said, "I'm
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallOne Frame More2026-01-21text/htmlen-USOne Frame More2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®255722026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21En Sommer Siden, and: A Summer Ago, and: 7 Notater I August, and: 7 Notes in August, and: Høsten Kom Tidlig Den Dagen, and: Fall Came Early That Day, and: Ingenting, 1985, and: Nothing, 1985
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979986
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Hun sier hun klarer seg, det går så bra så, sier hun, men solens skjær mot veggen spiller henne et puss. Hun peker mot lysflimmeret og snakker om barndommen, om den skarpslipte ljåen til Gusten på gården og om fjellet der hun klatret, de forbudte stedene. Det må ikke gå galt med deg, sier hun.She says she gets by, it goes so well now, she says, but the sun-glare against the wall plays a trick on her. She points at the light-flicker and talks about her childhood, about Gusten's sharp-edged scythe on the farm and about the mountain where she climbed, the forbidden places. It mustn't go wrong with you, she says.Yasujirō Ozus filmer, som har titler som Sen vår, Tidlig sommer, Tidlig vår, Sen høst, Sommerslutt og En
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallEn Sommer Siden, and: A Summer Ago, and: 7 Notater I August, and: 7 Notes in August, and: Høsten Kom Tidlig Den Dagen, and: Fall Came Early That Day, and: Ingenting, 1985, and: Nothing, 19852026-01-21text/htmlen-USEn Sommer Siden, and: A Summer Ago, and: 7 Notater I August, and: 7 Notes in August, and: Høsten Kom Tidlig Den Dagen, and: Fall Came Early That Day, and: Ingenting, 1985, and: Nothing, 19852026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®85662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21The Girl from Via Maqueda
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979987
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She's leaning against a wall, with one leg straight and the other folded, like a crane. Kinky jet-black hair frames her round, childish face. She's wearing shoes with cork wedges and laces wrapped around her skinny calves. Her skin is dark, a deep nocturnal color. She looks like a ten-year-old girl, even though she's glancing around with an adult, cocky demeanor. As if she were afraid, but at the same time defying her own fear by assuming a self-assured posture, smoking one cigarette after the other. On the ground, all around her, lots of cigarette butts and a few empty packs, crumpled and crushed.Dr. D.B., an engineer, passes her every morning in his car as he heads for the office. Almost in spite of himself, he
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallThe Girl from Via Maqueda2026-01-21text/htmlen-USThe Girl from Via Maqueda2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®434322026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Web
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979989
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The house has been repainted, now a soft lilac, and the roof is embellished with an ornate, hand-painted sign that reads DREAM WEAVERS and then, under that, GIFTS AND MASSAGES. My son, eleven years old and bored out of his mind, looks at the house and sighs. "This is where you lived?" he asks me, and I shake my head. "It was an important part of my childhood," I tell him for the second time today, "but I didn't live here."We walk through the door, and I cannot hold onto my memory of the house from my teenage years. Ambient music plinks and tinkles through the speakers, and the space is unbelievably bright, every wall and surface a brilliant white. "Look at all these rocks," my son says, and I remember that he is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallWeb2026-01-21text/htmlen-USWeb2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®1260422026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Load Shedding
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979991
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The electricity is out, a scheduled load shedding slot, and next door's generator is sput-sput-sputtering. Girl is standing at her first-floor bedroom window, watching intently as next door's Aunty squats out there in the dark, far from their homes, far beyond the communal wall, at the edge of the tangle of land Girl is supposed to never go near because in the past month alone three snakes have been caught slithering out—caught and thrashed with sticks—and Sano di said a child was even discovered there, stiff with venom—though it's true no one really minds what happens to broods from the shacks. In the snuff of night, without any streetlights, Aunty's body is indistinguishable from the sack she has dragged over
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallLoad Shedding2026-01-21text/htmlen-USLoad Shedding2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®250182026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Wherever you are, be Somewhere Else
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979993
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Heron, woodcut, Tessa Beaver, 2016My mother wrote her shopping lists on strips of etching paper, Rives or Somerset. The strips were about two inches wide and a foot long. They made great bookmarks. I still have a handful, which my mother gave me shortly before she died. The paper is thick and soft, yellowed with fingering, starting to tear.I really should chuck these old scraps. But they are irreplaceable. The type of Rives that my mother liked is no longer produced, and anyway I'm not about to buy quantities of etching paper. Even if I did, I doubt that I could make bookmarks with pleasantly rough edges. My mother was expert at this, through long practice. To her, the strips were simply off-cuts, removed before
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallWherever you are, be Somewhere Else2026-01-21text/htmlen-USWherever you are, be Somewhere Else2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®613952026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Subtropics Cryptic No. 2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979994
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Florida athlete beginning to play one more without ball (7)Old newspapers delivered quickly (7)Focused light flash here at the center (5)Anne Rice messily eating first piece of tropical fruit (9)Handyperson's key behind car park (9)Horse brought back info (5)Making fun of embroidery? (8)Good ladle carrying last of borscht (4-2)Brought in dog bed (6)Island's argyle OK in the wash (3, 5)Hot stuff, mom … grandma? (5)"This too shall pass," for example, initially providing wiggle room (9)Traditionally produced uniform ripped from Australian in scrum (9)Attempted to run in every direction at first (5)Tiny bit of sesame for Spooner's sushi wrap (7)This is spicy Japanese dough wrapped in sugar product (7)Bird at the beach
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallSubtropics Cryptic No. 22026-01-21text/htmlen-USSubtropics Cryptic No. 22026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®51882026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979995
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jacob beaver is the author of a novella, The Man Who Walked on Water.The Norwegian author rune christiansen has written eleven novels and several volumes of poetry. jason gordy walker is a poet who is translating Christiansen's Jeg går i sorg (I Walk in Mourning). His other translations of poems from this collection have appeared or are forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review, B O D Y, Cordite Poetry Review, and elsewhere.daniel davis-williams lives in the California Bay Area. His stories appear in Witness, The Sun, Santa Monica Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.mitchell galloway lives in Gainesville, Florida. His work has appeared in Forever Magazine, The Panacea Review, R&R, and Subtropics.isha karki's work has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/710/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2026-01-21text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2026-01-212026TWOProject MUSE®70972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-21