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The 2020

By Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Photography by Henry Danner

September 8, 2020

We were passengers forced to jump into the water when our ship, the 2020, after years of creaking, cracked in half and sank down into the darkness. The ship was long thought to be beautiful. For it gleamed in the sunlight. And it gleamed in the moonlight. It throbbed like a beacon, could be seen across great distances. And since it was like a beacon it was taken for a beacon. 

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National Interests

By Anuradha Bhagwati, Jamelle Bouie, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jason Stanley, Illustrations by Agata Nowicka

September 8, 2020

On July 30, 2020, we invited Anuradha Bhagwati, Jamelle Bouie, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Jason Stanley to discuss our current state of affairs and a few of the larger political themes that animate them.

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Truth’s Empire

By Cutter Wood, Illustrations by Asaf Hanuka

September 8, 2020

This is a story about money and statistics, and it begins with three nuns.

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Aanchal Malhotra’s Notes to Self

By Aanchal Malhotra

September 8, 2020

One of the undercurrents of the migration narrative is the story told by the objects of exodus, that economy of objects transformed by the trip itself—relics of a former life that are sold or hidden away; keepsakes that molder, heirlooms pored over ritually, a subtle history inherited. All of which raises the question: If forced to flee your country, what would you take with you?

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Cyclorama

By Corey Van Landingham

September 8, 2020

Outside the Visitor Center—patrons queuing up in
khaki camo shorts, baseball caps, Where Big Bucks
Lie, boxes of MoonPies wheeling by—two black
men with rubber gloves, with Windex, on a July
Monday, polish the bronze Lincoln.

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Redaction/ monument

By Éireann Lorsung

September 8, 2020

 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things I CORINTHIANS 13:11  Redaction? No, monument: a             [...]

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Love Note: Surely

By Ashley M. Jones

September 8, 2020

Surely you stay my certain own, you stay
obtuse. Surely your kisses were little poisons 
gripping tight my lips, my arms, mapping their way
across my unsure body. Surely, this fission

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Greatest Nigger Who Ever Lived

By Ashley M. Jones

September 8, 2020

in the selfie he is currently texting to “Lula Mae,”
the man next to me on flight 4853
to Columbia, dressed in a black turtleneck
and a thick double chain,

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