Issue 560 | The Sun Magazine

August 2022

Readers Write

Teeth

Losing them, fixing them, forgetting to put them in

By Our Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

Of History And Hope

We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

By Miller Williams
Quotations

Sunbeams

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

The Sun Interview

Made To Be Broken

Richard Albert On The Difficulty Of Amending The U.S. Constitution

The way Americans interact with each other now has made it clear that the Constitution was perhaps never deserving of all the praise it’s gotten.

By Mark Leviton
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

White Lines

We divided ourselves up until the teams were formed correctly, evenly. In other words, until the white kids were satisfied. No one had declared them the leaders, but, like most enduring traditions, the rule had become quietly understood, rooted in our fledgling muscles and minds.

By Emilio Carrero
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Beetle King

My chest, which was beginning to grow round in the wrong places, had to be hidden under a T-shirt no matter how hot or sweaty I became. Out in the desert I had to squat behind the cover of creosote bushes to pee. At home in my family’s Airstream I was my parents’ youngest daughter, but up in the paloverde I felt like one of the boys.

By Zoë Bossiere
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Some Notes On Fathers And Sons

I learned how to be a man by modeling the behavior of my father, and then other men. What I don’t know is how my son has modeled me, and that’s creating a commotion in my heart.

By Gary Percesepe
Fiction

Sticks And Stones

In 1986 I was the Horse Girl of St. Margaret’s, the tallest girl in sixth grade, with dark-brown hair I tossed like a mane.

By Erin Almond
Photography

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Photograph By Arin Scholtens
Poetry

Dudley Ball

The red hair and freckles, puffy cheeks / and constant perspiration amplified / his otherness. No one spoke to him. / But why do I see his face so clearly now, / the fear and loneliness in his eyes? / The faces of all the others I’ve forgotten.

By John Brehm
Poetry

Updated Portrait In A Grocery Store

Most days I stick to the periphery — / produce and eggs and chicken and cheese — / but tonight I am buying peanut butter, / which here is inexplicably placed / with the popcorn and chips.

By Caleb Nolen