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A Public Space

No. 21

“She regrets not what was, but what should have been, could have been.” —Marie NDiaye's self-portrait in green; Roxane Gay at war; Edward Carey on seeing and being seen; Rachel Farbiarz and Stefania Heim on Memorial Hill; new fiction by Jensen Beach, Elizabeth Gaffney, and J. Robert Lennon; poems by Camille Rankine, Craig Morgan Teicher, Marina Tsvetaeva, and others; and introducing Jamel Brinkley.

Table of Contents



 

Feature

The Woman in Green

Against melancholy, against regret, common sense and cynicism can do nothing. She regrets not what was, but what should have been, could have been, had she only made some other choice way back then.

Marie NDiaye


 

Fiction

Infinite Happiness

Uncle Max made an ambiguous face and told me, not for the first time, that black men used to be kings. Then he shifted his Good Humor bar to his left hand, and slapped me. Sometimes I still feel the pop of his ring on my mouth.

Jamel Brinkley


 

Fiction

Animals at Uneasy Rest

It bothered him she didn’t try to hide it. He would have tried to hide something like this. When he thought this, he understood that his wife was a better person than he was and this bothered him too.

Jensen Beach


 

Fiction

Noble Things

It all happened so fast; it hardly seemed real until the war began and it was too real and then the war ended and nothing had been saved, which was always the case when foolish men made prideful decisions.

Roxane Gay


 

Art

Memorial Hill: An Illustrated History

What does it mean to recognize a person? To know a person? To understand and tell what has happened?

Rachel Farbiarz


 

Poetry

Two Poems

My humble roof! Smoke from a beggar’s fire! / So different from what I was born into!

Marina Tsvetaeva


 

Poetry

Two Poems

I want to give you everything. / This is called a sickness.

Camille Rankine


 

Poetry

Apprehension of Thursday

1 / You can’t prove it but / 2 / this is reality.

Craig Morgan Teicher


 

Poetry

Telegraph Flowers

I stood a while / before the flowers

Matthew Zapruder


 

Poetry

Heft

A thin glaze left on her palm from a thing held too long / or is it her own thingness / that rose from her hand to meet the bowl or apple or face in a dream, or is it / only memory / leaking from her / almost too slowly to notice.

Rusty Morrison


 

Poetry

The Easement

One moth flies above many hands / & I don’t want the words for desire / to fuse to a life of what presents a weed

Joshua Marie Wilkinson


 

Poetry

See a Furious Waterfall Without Water

Never has an empty hand been made / into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without / it swings so hard it swings out / of existence. How will anyone get married / now, with no wall of water behind them?

Patricia Lockwood


 

Poetry

Two Poems

An idle wife in the home / Lying down early, getting up late

Li Shangyin


 

Poetry

Everyone’s Dead, the Rest are Gone

Everyone’s dead, the rest are gone. / What remains are deciduous words tasting of seaweed, / toothbrushes, hairbrushes, shoe brushes.

Anna Piwkowska


 

Poetry

Assemblage

Suborned to bear false witness, he said to himself, If I don’t, someone else will. Whereupon he was someone else.

Irving Feldman


 

Poetry

Ceiling and Time

8 / The stars inside preside / over time, for a century

Jeffrey Yang


 

Poetry

The Lucky Couple

This warm spring weather made us lazy / Sitting side by side on a park bench

Charles Simic


 

Fiction

A Stormy Evening at the Buck Snort Restaurant

She has a memory of the world outside this place. There was a time when she thought she might be able to outrun whatever it was that has made her this way.

J. Robert Lennon


 

Fiction

Yes

She felt the sort of panic that sometimes seized her when she stood by herself on a subway platform, alone: She had lost her baby, forgotten her on the train!

Elizabeth Gaffney


 

Art

Seeing and Being Seen

A dark fairy tale about our faces, our transience, and why we take down life and try to preserve it.

Edward Carey


 

Fiction

War, Blossoms

The recently dispersed with their encumbering passports. To them everything is new; everything has to be discovered and experienced and lost from scratch.

S. J.  Naudé

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