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Gratitude
A second chance at work, a shared meal in the classroom, a helpful stranger at a rest stop
November 2023The Salmonella Special
In twelve months I hadn’t set foot in a supermarket, hadn’t compared the prices of two brands of bread, hadn’t stood in a checkout line to buy anything, not even a pack of Tic Tacs. Everything I ate had been thrown away. Everything I ate, I’d found first.
October 2023Forecasting
November steals light. Its groaning, / overstuffed table force-feeding / December’s mandatory twinkle. Sticky / sugar & shine. A buffer for the hangover / January brings, when we huddle & low, hay damp / in our shuttered mangers, pockets emptied / of savings & saviors
October 2023Elegy With Adding Machine And Milk
One cold November day / after the lambs were sold / and the wheat brought in, / my grandfather settled / himself at his desk / and punched the numbers / into an electromechanical / adding machine, the gears / whirring and cachunking, / a long white ribbon pooling / on the dusty linoleum
October 2023The Nail Salon
Some people remember childhood bike rides and ice-cream sundaes; I remember acetone and moon-slivers of nails.
October 2023Fire
A chair flies through your window and someone’s screaming for you to come out and you’re fourteen and he’s twenty and there’s nowhere to go and no cops coming and no one to make this any better, and you become a flame that can’t be extinguished.
October 2023Burning Questions
Meg Krawchuk On Our Changing Relationship With Fire
A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.
October 2023Selected Poems
For two years The Sun was a lighthouse that guided me through rough, dark waters: Every line of mine that Sy [Safransky] published penetrated a little more of the fog called imprisonment. Every poem revealed my wrecked spirit dashed against the reef. Not only had Sy loved them, but Sun readers sent letters of appreciation, which Sy printed in the magazine. I’d never been complimented for anything, much less a literary contribution. My life had some hope in it now.
October 2023This Month In Sun History
Our 50th Year Of Publication
Forty-four years ago this month, we offered a special holiday rate on gift subscriptions. That was the first time, and it’s a tradition we’ve continued every year since. The announcement of that original offer in 1979 described The Sun as “the ideal gift for friends who’d share your enthusiasm for a totally independent journal, a forum for those who lead lives of intensity and impact” — a description that, happily, has remained true.
October 2023The American Dream
An Indian immigrant, an oil-company man, a bicycle-riding nomad
October 2023