I am convinced it is art that frets us out of this sort of thinking and, by newly minting the world, can bolster the foundations upon which our civilization is built.

In the Korean story when the king told the lovers that they must be parted, exiling them to opposite ends of the sky, it was the magpies who volunteered to make a bridge of their bodies, once a year, so that the lovers could meet.

Maxine Clair’s coming-of-age novel in stories, Rattlebone, is one of those books that deserves to be brought out of the shadows of African American literature and back into the spotlight it so rightly deserves.

You lie on top of soft white sheets, your bones sinking below to the smooth wooden floor. The ceiling is a white cloth, scooped into a tent point at the center below a thatched roof. Already you feel the relief of not being surrounded by your shelves, your kitchen, your books. You think, When I get home, I will get rid of everything.

The truth is
I’ve had minor
abstraction surgery,
can you tell.

“They say that’s where dreams take flight. That’s where you go and get into brujería. You call your ancestors and they do shit for you. Like a séance.”

The stated intention of the Booker Prize is to select “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland” over a single year. The judges are bound by no criteria except this. This raises at least three questions. Is this a worthy goal? Does the Booker Prize actually do this? And finally, should the Booker Foundation be in charge of this mission?

How do I know you’re not climbing the lines
in this poem, folding magic into your hearts?

Where is there to go when our deaths feel so imminent, as if waiting for us in front of the case of oranges in the produce aisle at the grocery store, in my daughter’s every question, in her face when a siren comes blaring past the car?

Once inside, Shilpi turned to face Ruby in the narrow foyer, framed by a wall of family portraits displayed in chronological rows. Directly above Shilpi’s head was a photo of Shilpi, Ravi, Kartik, and Ishika midair in matching lumberjack shirts, jumping over a pile of autumn leaves.