All Posts – Michigan Quarterly Review

America grows thicker with us

Published in Spring 2024 Online Folio Over cold cola and Jollof, my new best friend, a handsome Fula in my dorm, remembers back home a plane set ablaze from faulty machinery. Too cheap, he had chosen the bus and missed the inferno. A classmate burned to bone. At the embassy window, my number called,                               dice […]

America grows thicker with us Read More »

Published in Spring 2024 Online Folio Over cold cola and Jollof, my new best friend, a handsome Fula in my dorm, remembers back home a plane set ablaze from faulty machinery. Too cheap, he had chosen the bus and missed the inferno. A classmate burned to bone. At the embassy window, my number called,                               dice

An Image of Rebecca Makkai set over a cover image of her book "I Have Some Questions for you"

Memory and Lyrical Interludes: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai

I had the experience of encountering Rebecca Makkai’s work for the first time this summer. I burned through her latest novel, I Have Some Questions for You, which came out last February, in one breezy May morning.  The propulsive novel follows Bodie Kane, a film professor and podcaster, as she returns to the boarding school

Memory and Lyrical Interludes: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai Read More »

I had the experience of encountering Rebecca Makkai’s work for the first time this summer. I burned through her latest novel, I Have Some Questions for You, which came out last February, in one breezy May morning.  The propulsive novel follows Bodie Kane, a film professor and podcaster, as she returns to the boarding school

Vectors of Flight

Published in Spring 2024 Online Folio You wanna fly (Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon) The earth provides, makes us pillows-as-clouds that we can touch and wrap ourselves in, and instead of delighting in the miracle of a Cumulus we could reach, greed menaced our mother and enlisted youth, like pictured here, into turning the mundane—grasp

Vectors of Flight Read More »

Published in Spring 2024 Online Folio You wanna fly (Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon) The earth provides, makes us pillows-as-clouds that we can touch and wrap ourselves in, and instead of delighting in the miracle of a Cumulus we could reach, greed menaced our mother and enlisted youth, like pictured here, into turning the mundane—grasp

Delighted Disgust—Amainsa 1992

Published in Issue 63.2: Spring 2024 My grandmother grabs hold of a squirming itchy black worm. She pinches its bottom and its insides squeeze out. A satisfying trail of shimmering black slime dollops into the bowl at her crossed feet, just missing the swirling blue patterns on her chitenge wrapper. I fidget beside her on

Delighted Disgust—Amainsa 1992 Read More »

Published in Issue 63.2: Spring 2024 My grandmother grabs hold of a squirming itchy black worm. She pinches its bottom and its insides squeeze out. A satisfying trail of shimmering black slime dollops into the bowl at her crossed feet, just missing the swirling blue patterns on her chitenge wrapper. I fidget beside her on

An image of the book cover of Luiz Schwarcz's "Absent Moon" laid againt a white-gray background

Writing the Rest: Luiz Schwarcz’s Absent Moon

Luis Schwarcz begins his memoir atop a ski-slope, breathless with sudden anxiety at the descent before him. He’s not a novice skier, the trail is familiar, and the weather is clear, yet the fear grips him all the same. The scene never resolves. There is no triumph waiting—he remains forever suspended at the peak. For

Writing the Rest: Luiz Schwarcz’s Absent Moon Read More »

Luis Schwarcz begins his memoir atop a ski-slope, breathless with sudden anxiety at the descent before him. He’s not a novice skier, the trail is familiar, and the weather is clear, yet the fear grips him all the same. The scene never resolves. There is no triumph waiting—he remains forever suspended at the peak. For

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