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How can I find a way to praise / it? Do the early inventors & embracers / churn with regret?
By Elizabeth BradfieldSeptember 2022September 2022The emergence of intelligence, I am convinced, tends to unbalance the ecology. In other words, intelligence is the great polluter. It is not until a creature begins to manage its environment that nature is thrown into disorder.
Clifford D. Simak, Shakespeare’s Planet
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 BossiereAugust 2022Call next door, ask / neighbors on the west if they can spare / any wine, and suddenly a jarful comes / across the fence — fresh, unfiltered. We / open mats beside Meandering River’s / long currents, crystalline winds arrive, / and you’re startled it’s already autumn.
By David HintonJuly 2022Mouse angels I have called them, / terrifying and warm and mythical, / seeming almost terrified themselves, / skittering after the echoes of / their own voices homing in / on the smaller creatures of the night
By Dan GerberMay 2022An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.
By M.F.K. FisherMay 2022It sweeps and arcs across my path / almost every day on my walk to the cafe, / under sun or cloud, its red / seeming lit from inside, a brightness / bold as the lipstick my mother wore
By Andrea PotosMarch 2022At dusk, everything blurs and softens. / From here out over the long valley, / the fields and hills pull up / the first slight sheets of evening, / as, over the next hour, / heavier, darker ones will follow.
By Linda McCarristonMarch 2022Staying at home with my books and out-of-tune piano / and a cat who loves me only when she’s out of food is nothing new. / I’m OK. Thank you for asking. I have become quite used to sending / thoughts and prayers to those who keep the world going round / while I spin old punk records — Dead Kennedys, Buzzcocks, Crass — / lamenting days long past.
By Norman MinnickJanuary 2022A new feature in the magazine, A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
January 2022Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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