Body at Stake
Boys will be boys—my hands are tied! A witch, they scream, she’s the devil’s crook, She’s seasoned with sins. I burn—I cook. My body is here! Mine! And naked upon the stake. So, gird your loins for the big strip tease: The fire and myself at one, at ease. A biting
Anna and Mary
Anna put her index finger to her mouth, found the sore molar and pressed down on it. The layer of phlegm in the back of her throat was still faintly sweet. She put the jar of honey back in the cupboard. As a child, she had ground her teeth as she slept; she couldn’t help […]
Do We Need Backbone?
To read Moby Dick is to learn that Herman Melville really cares about whales. Not in what they represent, not for how they make us feel: whales matter as whales. In this sense, he is a bit of a surprise to readers whom secondary education has trained to search for the point behind the premise. [&hel
Constant Screaming: A Review of The Zone of Interest
“Are you sleeping well?” asks the white-coated SS doctor. “Yes,” replies Rudolf Höss. Jonathan Glazer, the man behind Sexy Beast, a heist film about a retired English gangster with skin sunburned to the colour and texture of red crocodile leather; Birth, in which a ten-year-old (graphically
Resurrecting Killed Darlings: “Write, Cut, Rewrite” at the Weston Library
Joan Didion needed a drink before she edited her writing. She admits as much to an audience packed into the New York Public Library one day in November 2011. “The drink loosens me up enough to actually mark up my work, you know”, she twangs as she gazes, unblushing, into the crowd. Dry humour is
Why I Wear Clown Makeup to Prep School
Val and I met on Tinder in January of 2021. I was at my lowest then—I mean, I was on Tinder in Massachusetts, home of MIT and Harvard students (shudder), crazed Patriots fans, and the Pilgrims. The city is still pretty puritan: no drinking till 21! Gasp! We value modesty, “neighborly concern,”
In Conversation With: Tapir
Following the release of their first album The Pilgrim, Their God and The King of My Decrepit Mountain, Ike Gray, Ronnie Longfellow, and Wilfred Cartwright from the six-piece band Tapir! performed an intimate gig at Truck Store, Oxford. Despite the reduced size of the band, they deliver an incredibl
One Must Imagine Wittgenstein Cruising
Wittgenstein, the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, was gay. Or maybe bi. Or perhaps he had especially close friendships with men for whom he had a certain aesthetic appreciation but with whom – no sir – he most definitely never ever had gay sex! There is something slightl
