I’m in the dental hygienist’s chair and she’s a new one, although very much the same bright, cheery presence as the last, which works for me. The unencumbered heart is best, I think, in matters such as these. She seems about the age of my daughters, which I mention as we talk. She’s from wes…
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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.
‘When I was a kid, my family doctor, right through high school, was this wonderful, funny guy with a little Boston Blackie moustache who looked a lot like Burgess Meredith.’
‘He did what people told him to do. He was a machine.’
A short story by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.
‘The heart was something that healed, but the best you could do with a broken tooth was to keep it in your pocket.’
Christian Lorentzen on tooth extraction.
‘I can’t help Lentille. Even though she roars. As long as she roars, I won’t be able to work.’
An essay from Urs Mannhart, translated by Christine Müller
‘The stone is cold; touching a leaf is like touching skin.’
A botanist’s assistant longs for her lover in this extract from The Weeds.
‘Petya Pravda's dead. He died forty days ago, as elongated and translucent as an icon.’
