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A Public Space

No. 26

I still had the Piedmontese capital in my mind; the monarchic city with its piazzas inhabited by scientists and kings, by politicians and by warriors motionless in tired and solemn poses on their pedestals of stone, I still had in mind all of the strange lyricism of its fateful geometric construction.
—Giorgio de Chirico

Table of Contents



 

Note

Public Space

Brigid Hughes


 

Painting

Super Sad Flowers

Nikki Maloof


 

Fiction

Do Not Let Mother Dear Find Us

Here I was, holding on to my attentiveness.

Yiyun Li


 

Image

Untitled, 1988

Fred Sandback


 

Painting

Le Rodeur: The Exchange

Lubaina Himid


 

Cities

Vale Lutetia

The suburbs of the avant-city appeared to me suddenly speckled with singing colors, papered with charming surprises.

Giorgio de Chirico


 

Fiction

Our Experience of Being Alive and Having to Breathe

Which is to say, a big struggle begat a little struggle begat a boy who dreamed of living in America, struggle free.

Lea Carpenter


 

Photography

Cy + Relics, Rome, 1952

Robert Rauschenberg


 

Photography

Temple of Hercules on the Citadel Mountain in Amman, Jordan, 2012

Josef Koudelka


 

Fiction

Public Access

Woman Sleeping

"Bodies are difficult," said the woman when the child finally slipped inside the dream.

Teolinda Gersão


 

Fiction

San Juan

Exile had a way of provoking contempt. One lived far away because one couldn't live inside.

Eduardo Lalo


 

City-Building

American Townscape [1953]

A cheerful optimism and an expanding economy have fostered the idea that technology can be harnessed to overcome any difficulty.

Christopher Tunnard


 

Syllabus

Aggregates, Amalgams, Allotropes

How can matter tell a story?

Lydia Xynogala


 

Document

Juxtapositions

Art does not have to "work." It is. It's not created, necessarily, for the public to decide whether it "works" or not.

Russell Atkins


 

NoteSpeech

Oder Sic Sprach

They pray for inspiration. Some of them even have a muse.

Gordon Lish


 

Letters

I Had Been Meaning to Write

Stop the presses! I thought of a better word! Almost the right one!

Bette Howland


 

Fiction

In a Deer Stand

It's a question of time. Sooner or later, somebody will show up.

Dorthe Nors


 

Fiction

Contract Work

And then what, they all say together, and repeat it again and again, and then what, and then what, and then what.

Bonnie Nadzam


 

Public Assembly

Audience, Crowd, and State

There are people who are frightened by the very idea of being part of an audience.

Bruce Barber


 

Poetry

The Infinities

All the days you have / ever breathed are swallows / shooting between trees.

Joanna Klink


 

Poetry

Missing File #1: Woolly Rhinoceros / Ancient Cavity Tooth

To give oneself is a way to say one’s self can be gifted, like the hollowed-out horn.

Alison Powell


 

Poetry

For You I’ve Started Sleeping

if I loved you for your beauty? / there are worse reasons to love

Kaveh Akbar


 

Poetry

Epithalamion

That this is love’s profession, our scents / on pillows displace our alphabet to grass

Fady Joudah


 

Poetry

Amuse-Bouche

But each plate obliterates the last / until I no longer mourn the destroyed plate.

Max Ritvo


 

Poetry

The Covered-Up Clock

And, although inaudible, still they are calling you.

Zsuzsa Takács


 

Poetry

Venus Surrender

I will love because it has been detected as the second / brightest octave to exist in the sky

Jordan Joy Hewson


 

Poetry

When the Other Man Asked Him Did He Pray

All those miles down the boulevard, numbers counting down by twos.

Richard Robbins


 

Photography

The Last of Us Are Barely Here

Mark Hage


 

Fellow

Meeting Points: Between and In Between Subject and Object

The articulation of a word dissolves, and the most carefully strung together sentence falls apart.

Cleo Mikutta


 

Fellow

Bergtagen

She had never liked the dark and the feeling that anything could be in it.

Phoebe McIlwain Bright


 

Fellow

Other Homes

This belief that luck was attainable.

Mindy Wong


 

Poetry

Three Poems

Longing saturates the world.

Li Qingzhao


 

Fiction

Refugees

I still don’t know how we had come to this.

Thanassis Valtinos


 

Convening

Delegates

Ernest Thompson


 

Research

Main Streets

The world pivots around Main Street.

Mindy Fullilove


 

Travel Diary

Journey Along the Sea Road

The human heart is more treacherous than these waters.


 

Poetry

La Bête Noire

The animals of the zodiac do not determine destiny.

Marcel Broodthaers


 

Painting

Moon Altar

Nikki Maloof


 

Proposals

Interiors

These are the original ceilings. They attract our eyes.

Melissa McGraw & Will Fryer


 

Painting

Interior with Calder Mobile

Elizabeth Bishop

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