Winter 2023 (246)

The Paris Review

The world's preeminent literary magazine.

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The Paris Review
EDITOR EMILY STOKES MANAGING EDITOR KELLEY DEANE McKINNEY DEPUTY EDITOR LIDIJA HAAS ASSOCIATE EDITOR AMANDA GERSTEN WEB EDITOR SOPHIE HAIGNEY ASSISTANT EDITORS OLIVIA KAN-SPERLING, ORIANA ULLMAN EDITORS AT LARGE HARRIET CLARK, ANDREW MARTIN, DAVID S.
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The Walk Book
On a cold but sunny Thursday in March 2014, I set out from my girlfriend Rosie’s apartment in West Philly to walk across the country. I’d been going to school nearby at Swarthmore, but for reasons that aren’t worth belaboring, left in December 2013,
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Three Poems
I fell asleep with an idea, but when I woke up, I’d lost it,as when, approaching the rabbit on the trail,it took off into the brush.I followed, clearing the warblers,fixing their gaze.Ruining something felt like a reason to proceed.Looking out at the
The Paris Review19 min read
Stump Of The World
At the stop sign before the library, Emma saw Gallo painting his yellow line as he had painted it for thirty years. The line highlighted a ten-foot-long crack in the road, a rogue speed bump that, unpainted, might do some damage to your car or your n
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The Answer Is Awe
Dream old pay phone ringing in hospital I pick upreceiver voicesays“Theanswerisawe.”Still don’t know what to do with it last September rightbefore I was diagnosed and the dream is still irritatingI have a checkup Friday I’m working on The Old Languag
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The Art of Fiction No. 261
Yu Hua was born in 1960. He grew up in Haiyan County in the Zhejiang province of eastern China, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. His parents were both in the medical profession—his father a surgeon, his mother a nurse—and Yu would often snea
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Crease
Both the actual horse on fire and its event out of these words Folded back through loveTrying not to be with but of Creased into petals around the trace of that touch A crease in the outside’s infinite regress So when I’m dying Actual dying will be a
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Mother
The bird was blue and grayLying on the stairsThere was somethingMoving inside of itAnd still I knew it was deadI promised my motherI wouldn’t touch anythingThat had been long goneInside something turned and wiggledThere’s a kind of transformationThat
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Water Becomes Water
Water becomes water’s shape in the water, inside the machine we becomethe image of the machine, the dusk becomes the machine’s dusk,in piercing we are pierced by the machine, we must usea defective good to prove we are defective goods, use movement t
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Dark Pattern
I accept the terms and conditions of our relationship as indicated by my continued use of this interface, designed with the indulgent architecture of a desert casino no one ever wants to leave, least of all the luckless gambler digging deeper to find
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Hostess
I met Jill in 1982. We were working the Sydney-to-LA route, and she looked exactly the way an air hostess was supposed to: like Marilyn Monroe on stilts, playing the part of a firm, friendly nurse with a naughty inner life. None of the passengers wou
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Hares
Not mine but I’ll take some—not too much, just part. Not the best part—it could be best, though, no wayof knowing, I’ll take just the blue part,the part that includesa cantilever bridge, or maybe the brown part that includesa horse’s halter, I’ll tak
The Paris Review28 min read
The Art of Poetry No. 115
In early March of 2021, Louise Glück visited Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, where I teach. Because of COVID, she was afraid to fly on a small plane to our regional airport, so I drove her myself from Berkeley, where, for some years
The Paris Review16 min read
Ice Blue
Even inside the plane the cold had registered, along with a deadening of all sound. But the glacial silence that awaits him outside is something else entirely. No attempt to imagine it could have prepared him. It occurs to him that he’s done well to
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Two Poems
sugar, folded into cream, a greetingin the ashtray, on the kitchen tablethe shopping bag, sticky coins where are the tennis balls hidingbehind a pile of shirts, napkinrings, the pelt of a fox, the batteries empty under the bed, the combthe briefs in
The Paris Review24 min read
Two Men, Mary
My first job was at a frozen yogurt shop called TCBY. This was 1987, in Tucson. The shop was on Speedway Boulevard, in a strip mall between two car washes—the first TCBY franchise in the city, though within a year there would be two more, plus a Greg
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Contributors
ANGELA BALL’s most recent book of poetry is Talking Pillow. MICHAEL BERRY is a writer and translator. He is the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. AIMEE CHOR is a poet and translator. SARAH CHARLE
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Credits
Cover: © the Estate of Sarah Charlesworth, courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Page 12, photograph by Jean Vong, courtesy of John Currin and Burnet Editions; pages 62, 66, 69, 70, 73, 76, 79, 82, 86, 91, 92, courtesy of Yu Hua; pages 122–128,
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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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