Man Holding Bottle

Coca Si, Cocaína No

Bear Guerra and Ruxandra Guidi

Bolivian President Evo Morales won office three years ago with the support of the nation’s coca growers. He's supporting those cocaleros with his “Coca Si, Cocaína No” program, allowing coca to be produced and marketed legally, while barring production of cocaine.

Essay

The Christian with Four Aces

Bill Sizemore

Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson in 1994 (Wally McNaMee / Corbis)

I spoiled Pat Robertson’s birthday. I know, because he told me so. “You guys are as crooked as a snake,” he sputtered. “I’ll have you all in depositions for the rest of your life.”

“God says, ‘Confess your sins,’” he told me, and as I shook his hand on the way out, added: “I’m going to pray for you.”


Poetry

Jamie's Hair

Michael Bishop

He scooped it with deft, long-fingered hands and tamed it /
with an elastic band, or let it hang loose on the flat bony cliff of his back.


The Storm

Charles Simic

I’m going over to see what those weeds /
By the stone wall are worried about.


The Great American Poem

Billy Collins

If this were a novel, /
it would begin with a character, /
a man alone on a southbound train /
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.
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Humor

‘Dead-Eye’ Comics

Ross MacDonald

MacDonald Panel

Fiction

My Interview with the Avenger

Tom Bissell

Drawing

This is a story about heroes. Yes, it is also a profile of a famous man, a “celebrity,” I suppose, but it is first and foremost a story about heroes, what they mean, and the draperies of significance with which we decorate them. The hero in question came to us as unexpectedly as a micrometeorite, and little has been the same since his impact.
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The 13th Egg

Scott Snyder

Drawing

The pond water boiled for three full days. When the water finally cooled, bystanders remarked on the clusters of odd-looking rocks on the pond’s bottom. Upon closer examination, the rocks were found to be turtle shells, boiled clean.
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VQR Rediscovery

Ezra Pound: Foreign Correspondent

Jon Schneider

On July 14, 1959, the Richmond News Leader ran an editorial by Ezra Pound entitled “Keynes Brainwashed Electorate with Economic Hogwash.” It was his first and last publication in the Virginia newspaper—despite a yearlong stint as its foreign correspondent in Europe.


Plus...

Lawrence Weschler on Robert Irwin, Chris Ware continues his “Jordan Lint” series, Glen Retief recalls his childhood, poetry from Charles Wright, criticism from William Logan, and much, much more.