No. 04
Michael Thomas at Yankee Stadium; an illustrated story by William T. Vollmann; Focus: Antarctica with Bill Manhire, Owen Marshall, Anne Noble, Sir Robert Falcon Scott, and others; Kevin Moffett eats out; Jillian Weise sends a letter from Buenos Aires; Anna Deavere Smith with a captive audience; stories by Jack Livings, Helen Schulman, and Jim Shepard; poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, Bernadette Mayer, Reginald Shephard, G. C. Waldrep, and more.
If You See Something
The Messenger
No. 04 • Samantha Hunt
“They hung a white Jesus in the hallway,” I told my sister.If You See Something
Homing
No. 04 • Ian Chillag
If pigeons had brains, and in turn the power to imagine dying and what happens afterward, they would have dreamed up Philadelphia as their heaven.If You See Something
I Special-Goddamn-Ordered These
No. 04 • Kevin Moffett
After awhile I avoided looking inside.If You See Something
Letter from Buenos Aires
No. 04 • Jillian Weise
Dear Big Logos, I’m alive in tango central!If You See Something
A Captive Audience
No. 04 • Anna Deavere Smith
As we approached the shimmering Nile River, we started to see soldiers lining the roads.Fiction
The Heir
No. 04 • Jack Livings
There once had been a time Omar looked forward to fighting the Chinese the way he looked forward to a good meal or sex.Poetry
The Former Age
No. 04 • Geoffrey Chaucer
A blissful life of peace and sweetness / was the life they led in the former age.Poetry
Song of the Broken Clocks
No. 04 • G. C. Waldrep
The broken clocks inside the clocks were singing. It was February.Poetry
Two Poems
No. 04 • April Bernard
Greedy thing, we called the dingo bitch who hung around camp / mustard brown with black streaks and filmy eyes.Poetry
Why do the Outmoded Maintain Themselves So Resolutely?
No. 04 • Sean Hopkinson
I am the prank / of smiles and summer easiness / where nothing else is / or could be.Poetry
The Clearing
No. 04 • Greta Wrolstad
In a field of thousands / of wheat stalks, millions of wheat / stalks, countless wheat stalksPoetry
At the Santa Lucia Highlands Court Ball
No. 04 • Christine Bown
when we met, I still in the stony-take / throes of accretion, you rapt in the grainy / phenomenon of disintegration.Poetry
Thought for a Stalled World
No. 04 • Adam Clay
In early June, a late frost, an airplane coming apart above us, / and then catching hold, / the dogs down the street lunging at each other, / and the grass in your hair from yesterday / still there.Poetry
Alongside the Desiring Machines
No. 04 • Reginald Shepherd
I wouldn’t know what to do / with gods worth more than summerPoetry
Lawn Archaeology
No. 04 • Leila Wilson
I did not think over / the bone’s curve / buried and grown.Poetry
The Sleep Touches Everyone
No. 04 • Nick Twemlow
The sleep touches everyone. The sleep is pinned to the junipers / wracking their collective sunshine for the answer.Poetry
Summer Solstice
No. 04 • Bernadette Mayer
“as long as i have something planned out / ahead of time…” you see this guy / is helping teach workshops, he must be phil / in dream, a younger man who can’t / come next week but it’s ok I sayFiction
Too Late
No. 04 • William T. Vollmann
It was getting late when I learned how much I liked the red brick buildings; here’s one with an octagonal tower!Fiction
I Am Seventy-Five
No. 04 • Helen Schulman
Six months after her husband died, Lily Weilerstein found his sex diaries buried in the back shelf of the cedar closet in the hallway of the Upper West Side apartment that they had lived in together for almost forty years, since the Age of Possibility as Walter had referred to it in retrospect, back when they were almost young.Focus
The Ridiculous and the Sublime
No. 04 • Bill Manhire
I was born in Invercargill—called by Rudyard Kipling "the last lamppost in the world"—so I grew up knowing that if I got in a small boat and rowed south for a very long time, I would eventually bump into an iceberg.Focus
Antarctic Summer Reading List
No. 04
Aurora australis is an atmospheric effect—“the southern lights”—equivalent to the northern aurora borealis.Focus
Antarctic Slang: Say it Like You Mean It
No. 04
Degomble: To remove the small balls of snow that have hardened on one’s hair. After a long day on the ice, huskies and bearded gentlemen require a particularly thorough degombling.Focus
The Frozen Continents
No. 04 • Owen Marshall
I had never met Beavis before he and I were put on the PEP scheme together.Focus
Antarctica Translated
No. 04 • Anne Noble
Anne Noble has been researching and photographing Antarctica since 2001.Focus
Impressions on the March
No. 04 • Sir Robert Falcon Scott
The seductive folds of the sleeping bag.Focus
The Fire on the Snow: A Radio Play
No. 04 • Douglas Stewart
I am to break into the conversation / With a word that tastes like snow to say; / I am to interrupt the contemplation / Of the familiar headlines of the dayFocus
The Republic of the Southern Cross
No. 04 • Valery Bryusov
There have appeared lately a whole series of descriptions of the dreadful catastrophe that has overtaken the Republic of the Southern Cross.Feature
Who’s Your Daddy
No. 04 • Michael Thomas
It would seem simple for most: my brother, who still lives in Boston, has managed to get tickets to game two of the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Yankees, enough for me to take my son and two friends.Order A Public Space
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