There’s a wonderful distinction in "The Book of Goose" between game-real and the fearsome reality of the world. “Game-real” is when your gameplay is so intense it feels real. Only it isn’t. Only the changing world is real, and in this novel, it eats up people alive.
Quadriptych, Petersen Events Center – Editor’s Pick
The significance of a few short minutes.
Our world is a mason jar being shaken,
Contents whirled up, coating the panes,
Surfing along the flat of the lid, mixed...
Driving Lessons
“Ready?” Ba ducks out of the garage, and Pai’s stomach clenches. Four weeks before he heads off to college, which means Ba wants to go driving with him every Saturday morning.
Because the one time Pai went alone, he crunched the side of the vehicle into a concrete pillar in an underground parking lot.
Traveling all of two miles an hour.
“I don’t think—” he starts.
“You just need practice.”
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
I’ve read novels, widely praised, by contemporary authors whose prose seems watery next to the lexical richness of ""If I Survive You".
Five Poems from Rose – Editor’s Pick
Jesus bird Walks the way the moonlight Walks on the bayous, Pantanal ol’en sea.
Braces
To describe the first days after he got his braces as dreadful was a gross understatement. The discomfort his dentist had cautioned him of turned out to be excruciating pain. He was constantly famished, but the bland, watery congee and foul-smelling soups prepared by his mother made him lose his appetite. He stopped talking to her, citing pain as pretext. Instead of spending time with his parents in the living room as he usually did, he retreated to his room, brooding.