Summer 2023 (244)

The Paris Review

The world's preeminent literary magazine.

The Paris Review1 min read
The Paris Review
EDITOR …… EMILYSTOKES MANAGING EDITOR …… KELLEY DEANE McKINNEY DEPUTY EDITOR …… LIDIJA HAAS ASSOCIATE EDITOR …… AMANDA GERSTEN WEB EDITOR …… SOPHIE HAIGNEY ASSISTANT EDITORS …… OLIVIA KAN-SPERLING, ORIANA ULLMAN POETRY EDITOR …… SRIKANTH REDDY ART DI
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My Good Friend
Sunday evening About the roof repair, I have nothing new to report. The tiles were supposed to arrive yesterday; they did not. I rang that young man at the store to give him a piece of my mind, but he’s always so nice that I forget I called to quarre
The Paris Review33 min read
The Art of Fiction No. 259
John Keene, an author of fiction, poetry, and criticism as well as a translator, once-prolific blogger, and skilled draftsman, was born in 1965. He grew up in St. Louis and then in Webster Groves, Missouri, a small suburb two miles out. His father wa
The Paris Review1 min read
Ex-Stewardess
I used to be a lockgold-looking I used to be a dogpart malamutepart pointerpart bluetick hound Never what will beas banjo in hand Carefully tryingto stay awake The townheld a quiveringvoice. Sitting in the suncitrus trees fulllemons, oranges andlimes
The Paris Review18 min read
The Letter
The first that Riley saw of the letter was a picture of it in an email from the post office, the morning of the day it arrived. Riley had signed up for the notification service a few years earlier, when packages were being stolen out of the lobby of
The Paris Review31 min read
Helen
She was a friend of my family—the Carlins, as I have chosen to call them. She and my father met in the fifties through the editor of the architecture magazine where she began her career. My father had taken her out a few times. They were never lovers
The Paris Review7 min read
Kings
1.Kings lie down to zip up their jeans,buy Cetaphil, candy, magazinesat Walgreens because they canwalk there unsupervised, describeblowjobs they’ve given to seniorsin cars, spend what they think of astheir own money. Home sick from school,they learn
The Paris Review1 min read
Armed Cavalier
The end of autumn lowers its leaves in the wealthy residential neighborhoods. Paintings in galleries and private foundations hold some short-lived way of seeing into misery or love. Those artists believed in power. I should, too. Strangers unman me i
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“No Brown Sugar in Anybody’s Milk”
Essie T-e-e-e. Essie T. Where is that girl? Essie T., hurry up and come in here and fasten the back of this dress. Honestly, girl, are you always so slow? A big clumsy-looking girl pushed herself across the room. She walked as if she were afraid that
The Paris Review29 min read
The Art of Poetry No. 114
Sharon Olds published her first book, Satan Says, in 1980, at the age of thirty-seven. The book is organized into four sections, “Daughter,” “Woman,” “Mother,” and “Journey,” and it begins with its title poem, whose speaker is locked in a box she can
The Paris Review1 min read
Cat in Portrait
If one misses the startingpointone startsanywhere: even ifone losesthe catis won. And no one waits. Not eventhe cat waits for the cat. The cat’s aloneand that allows itto invent itselfits passions. Its riskis to knowand beforehandthat no one will wan
The Paris Review1 min read
From “Flag”
Flesh falls toward shiftless sleep It’s a faulty arrangement Most streams run concurrent Here here To a flaw In fact you may make it up A river branches And sea An example A mirror branches Off Open i A closed lid I could a being bee Eliding light Fo
The Paris Review21 min read
Little House
On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s
The Paris Review1 min read
Summer Letters
Tree, the sun’s brainchild. The caterpillars are crawling to heaven. The porcupine ate the delectable car tire. Wind bends the tree. I couldn’t do that. The black raspberry’s passion for a drop of sunlight. While I wrote, a butterfly, that critic, ro
The Paris Review3 min read
Antwerp (2)
Whenever I went on too long about AntwerpThe doctor would quietly descend the two steps To the kitchen and pour a cold French whiteInto a tumbler, so as not to incriminate himself. There was a growing sense of foreign matterIn my body, a sense that t
The Paris Review15 min read
Selections from Journal, 1996
Thought about how describing a dream immediately shows up its symbolic value—“I was ineptly taking part in a production of his and he did not give me any help …”—and realized (over again?) that that is what writing does: an incident, once it is descr
The Paris Review25 min read
Dead Woman
At first it seems like nothing. Headaches. Slight loss of appetite. An overall weariness Emma tries to ignore as she goes to work, yoga, Whole Foods. She’s forty-two and has always taken good care of her body. She stretches daily. Avoids fried foods
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Contributors
MARGOT BERGMAN is a visual artist. In the mid-eighties, she began making paintings of cups on scrap paper, using each workday’s leftover paint. LEOPOLDINE CORE is the author of the poetry collection Veronica Bench and the story collection When Watche
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Credits
Cover: Courtesy of Emilie Louise Gossiaux and Mother Gallery. Page 12, photograph by Jean Vong, courtesy of Shara Hughes and Burnet Editions; pages 32, 36, 39, courtesy of John Keene; pages 40, 46, © Patrick Sylvain; page 50, courtesy of Cave Canem F
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Acknowledges
The Plimpton Circle is a remarkable group of individuals and organizations whose annual contributions of $2,500 or more help advance the work of The Paris Review Foundation. The Foundation gratefully acknowledges: 1919 Investment Counsel • Gale Arnol

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