By RACHEL HADAS
The old woman with the art
paces through her silent rooms,
sunlight reflecting off the frames.
Adult children live downstairs
in the basement. Whose is the art?
Is it the world’s or hers or theirs?
Reggie pulled his truck up the driveway and past the old goat pasture, a field of knee-high brome that now fed only a rusted tractor, not a buck or a nanny in sight. The only good thing about his wife’s death all those years ago—he could finally let go of the shaggy herd she had loved so much, fill the freezer, and focus on the more agreeable ruminants.
Reggie killed the ignition next to the house. One coal-colored cloud floated like a top hat above his yellow lopsided rancher. Past that, the afternoon sun painted the foothills a fiery mauve. In the distance a trio of bluffs gave way to an abstract canvas, just cattle and rust-red desert smudging south to New Mexico and on into the Navajo Nation.
By L. S. KLATT
I leave the house unlocked & walk to the garage jacked to
The White Stripes. My mouth is a guitar; snow is in the sound hole.
Spring. I think it’s spring. The automatic door leaps
in its tracks & is music again. I record on my phone a soundwave
as the GTO convertible wheels out of its tomb, the driveway
chartreuse with maple wings. Tell White I’ll cut some garlic
Empty streets, even our taxi
is missing, but the train station
is crowded. I comb
my hair, looking at
the reflection
in the ticket window.
By LIZ DEWOLF
The buzzer rattles the empty room. Nearly empty—there’s the bed behind the wooden screen, the couch where Laurel sits in her underwear. Since Arda’s text that afternoon, she’s waited restlessly for him to arrive, imagining his route from where she lived with him on the Asian side of Istanbul to her new apartment on the European side: the narrow streets down to the ferry station, the boat churning through silver water, the near-vertical climb to her sixth-floor walkup in Beyoğlu. She presses the button that unlocks the building’s entrance and decides not to get dressed.
Arda enters her apartment without knocking. “Mutlu yıllar,” he says, though it’s now several weeks into 2013. For the first time since Laurel’s lived in Turkey, they didn’t celebrate the New Year together.
By J. J. STARR
in faith i pray for you…
i wasn’t aware of you
i think of you free
a song a night you…
pieces, i can share
just some with you…
April brings new poems by our contributors: SHARON DOLIN, KERRY JAMES EVANS, ANDREW HUDGINS, AND MARIA TERRONE!
Sharon Dolin, Kerry James Evans, Andrew Hudgins, Maria Terrone (from left to right)
Table of Contents:
—Sharon Dolin, “Savor”
—Kerry James Evans, “Smoky”
—Andrew Hudgins, “After Death”
—Maria Terrone, “Alchemy”
By JULIANA LEITE
Translated by ZOË PERRY
Reviewed by JAY BOSS RUBIN
In the opening chapter of this subtle epic, the centenarian narrator Natalia confides: “At this point in life, I’d say that going on forever or for too long is a bad decision, a very bad one; what’s nice is to exist and then stop existing, to exist for a while and then be able to change the subject.” In other words, if the transition between life and death is an abrupt one, then so be it. “[L]et’s be done with it,” she says, “though it would be nice to have the time to spritz on some perfume beforehand.”
When I first encountered this sentiment in Juliana Leite’s Exemplary Humans, translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry, I took it be a bit of a bluff. It reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw a couple of years ago in Portland, Oregon, that read: “I ♥ AGING & DYING” (which I interpreted as an existentialist rejoinder to proclamations of commercial allegiance—“I ♥ Mr Plywood” and so on—so common in my hometown). But by the end of Leite’s novel, which takes place primarily in Rio de Janeiro and Petrópolis, Brazil, and spans that country’s lengthy dictatorship, I was convinced that Natalia’s breezy acceptance of her own mortality was absolutely serious. It is not only possible, but strongly advised to love aging and dying. It isn’t easy, though. To transcend dread, and transform it into something more palatable, a unique kind of emotional intelligence is required, and so is a talent for adjusting one’s perspectives. Natalia is the novel’s exemplar of both these qualities.
Curated by KEI LIM
This month, JULIET MCSHANNON, RO SKELTON, and TERESE SVOBODA review books that center personal and political hardships. They carefully consider the responsibility and care of writing about real people, the act of research in representation, and how writing can function as an agent of change.
We are thrilled to announce that “The Hare,” written by Ismael Ramos and translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers, and “Inês” by Joāo Pedro Vala have been selected for the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction for 2026. Both stories were originally published in The Common Online in 2025. An anthology of the winning stories, edited by Tommy Orange, will be released this September from Vintage.
In the prize announcement, series editor Jenny Minton Quigley writes, “Many of this year’s O. Henry Prize winners manifest a youthful, new way of seeing in their stories. If our world is to be saved it will be by the genius of the next generations.“
View the full list of winners and read more about the prize at LitHub.
Congratulations to Ismael Ramos, Jacob Rogers, Joāo Pedro Vala, and all the winners!
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