All tagged The Epiphanic

"On Manuel Neuer and his Rainbow Armband" by Jackie Hedeman

Here’s the deal: Manuel Neuer, German team captain, six-foot-tall blond man and possibly the world’s greatest goalie, elected to wear a rainbow-striped captain’s armband, first in a friendly against Latvia, and then in the first two tournament games against France and Portugal. Following the second match, it was announced that UEFA (Union of European Football Associations, the European Cup’s governing body), was considering sanctions on the grounds that the armband was a political statement.

"The Thrill" by Bonnie Chau

I thought about the elements of a thriller, as a genre: danger, death, uncertainty, violence, crime, corruption. Certainly all of these things are in the ether as we speak; and suspense, well, we are all undeniably suspended in some way right now.

Call and Response

by Hawa Allan

As a card-carrying member of the horde, I have never had the privilege of having only one voice echoing in my head. I have always had multiple voices singing in mine. The call, and the response.

The Literature of Others

by Michael Barron

What would happen if all works in all languages were universally readable? New forms of thinking, new colors for the literary palette, and ultimately, the possibility of atypical influences. To put an old trope on its head, everything has been invented, but not every invention has been discovered.

The Fifth Reason

by Yoojin Na

Levy, who cries on escalators, doesn’t hate her children. She doesn’t hate her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Rather, she hates that a woman must extend herself to assume a domestic role and become a stranger to the person she once was.

Nothing More French

by Gracie Bialecki

The more the French view me as part of their country, the more I see myself as belonging here with them. With my blonde hair and daily scarves, I look the part. It’s easier to accept superficial validation such as compliments on my accent and cultural ease from the French than it is to reconcile my fading American patriotism.

Susana's Jaguar

by Siena Oristaglio

Two performers, Asun Noales and Sebastian Rowisnki,

stand in a circle of small jaguar heads. 

The heads are sculpted from pearl-white plastic

by an artist named Susana Guerrero.

The heads are perfectly identical.

Their mouths stretch agape, as if caught mid-roar.

Beyond rows of jagged teeth, 

each throat swells with inky black.

For the Enjoyment, the Sentences, the Fear, the Laughter, the Grace

by Tess Crain

Having read, last year, with a certain stringent intensity, I tried to be more omnivorous and relaxed about my choices in 2019. Perhaps because of this, I’m not sure which books were the best. Here are five, however, ranging from the second to the twenty-first century in origin and including both fiction and nonfiction, that made a singular impression—all also share a probing interest in the human relationship to scale.

Where All the Missing Items Are Mended: On THE PREPOSTEROUS WEEK

by Robb Todd

"I loved that, no matter where the characters went underground, they came out into the same space," said Mack, who might be best known for his two-decade run in the Village Voice with the comic strip “Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies." "I could see a double-paged spread showing a huge old fashioned attic — full of the different entry points. To me, the story said, whatever you think you know about the rules of life, forget it, ain’t necessarily true."  

Making Faust Great Again

by Tess Crain

I began reading Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend (1947), in mid-2016, casually. I’d bought the book by mistake several years prior, thinking it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s version—that is, the seminal German Faust. I am not the first to have confused the two authors.