Baghdad was not the most obvious place to celebrate Passover. Saddam had fallen barely a week before it began, looters were rampaging through the city, dozens of buildings were on fire and Islamic hardliners were arming militias. What’s more, in a city of almost five million people there were only…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘I should warn you, she said, ketchup on her chin, on the back of her hand. I like to have sex a lot.’
Fiction by Kathy Stevens.
‘Desire charges the landscape with physical upheaval. We become water, weather. And why not? Why describe a character by the hat she is wearing instead of her experience of orgasm?’
Robert Glück and K Patrick on writing desire.
‘The burden in law on the pregnant person is to show that they are at risk, in need; they must ask, and hope, rather than demand.’
Memoir by Andrea Brady.
‘On Good Friday, the priest in the livestream video stood inside the darkened sanctuary.’
Fiction by Nicolette Polek.
Rachel B. Glaser shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
