The Threepenny Review

Madelyn Chen is a poet in the moments when she is not writing papers as a third-year student at Harvard Law School. Simone Di Piero’s recent books include The Complaints (poems) and Mickey Rourke and the Bluebird of Happiness: A Poet’s Notebooks. G

When I saywe’ve been here before,I don’t meanthe particlesthat compose usbut the waythey’re arrangedto predispose usto mistakea hose for a snakebut not a snake for a hose. When I say,we’ll be hereagain, I meanonly as codethat constellates,not the con

The Threepenny Review is supported by Hunter College, the Bernard Osher Foundation, Campizondo Foundation, Mad Rose Foundation, and the George Lichter Family Fund. Our writer payments are underwritten by our Writers’ Circle, which includes Robert Bau

ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

Editor and Publisher: Wendy Lesser Associate Editors: Sabrina Ramos Rose Whitmore Art Advisors: Allie Haeusslein Sandra Phillips Proofreader: Zachary Greenwald Consulting Editors: Geoff Dyer Deborah Eisenberg Jonathan Franzen Louise Glück Ian McE

in memory of Adam Zagajewski So many friends have you seen pass,maestro of the poetic eulogy. Now it’s my turn. Can you hear me?We don’t know. Why didn’t we spend more time together,talk more, call each other? I thought you’d live to be old,very ol

The photographs selected for this issue were taken by Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938), an artist whose immense and wide-ranging output has been dedicated to amplifying the phrase “Black Is Beautiful.” With his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite co-founded t

All of the photographs in this issue were taken by Kwame Brathwaite and are copyrighted in his name. We are grateful to the artist for allowing us to reproduce them here, as well as to Philip Martin Gallery for supplying us with the scans. Below are

I thought it was drool rolling down the sideOf your mouth but it was a trick of the light.It was actually a smile. About to leaveI thought I had heard someone say something.But it was you talking in your dream.Nestled in the sofa, your arm on your ch

I’m ready for a new poem.Sure, it’ll still be on a first name basiswith ants in eye sockets,rain on ruined lawns,the myriad of household solvents’explosive potential.It’ll still be astounded by translucence,how pressure causes it in what doesn’t shat

Ifeanyi says in his country a babyIs It until it learns to be one of Us. I am in my Igbo second infancy.The coral, a quarrel, a glacier, my lungs. The weather, the world, the book review.Lyrical bitching. Biblical plaint. Infant debt of attention aga

Eyebrows raised in surprise,He got into the habitOf talking to himselfAnd answering his own questionsIn a loud and angry voice. ■

Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. Teatret ved Sorte Hest, Copenhagen, September 2021. Dana H. by Lucas Hnath. Lyceum Theatre, New York, October 2021. THE FIRST live theater I saw, after things began opening up in the fall of 2021, was a performance of

To read it, you will need a nickelor a thumb nail. To read ityou will need better luckthan the ones who wrote it. What looks like gold leafdoes not flake off but cakesinto greasy reefs, and the parableis not written under the foil. Nor is its moral w

My father would take the washclothand wring it out with both of his hands,the water falling like rain from a heavenhe controlled. He would wash my back,and I would watch him teach metenderness—the way he would guta deer, holding the ribs like a dance

We are grateful to the following individuals, who in 2021 generously contributed to The Threepenny Review, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Friends of The Threepenny Review gave up to $99 each, those in The Silver Bells donated between $100 and $49

My mother holds her apology in one hand, bowl of cut fruit bursting from her palm as if she were the tree whose branches bore blood rush apples, bruise purple pears, unholy screams of persimmons torn from sun, instead of a daughter without accent onl