GIANT FINISH His legs are well-muscled, taut, rippling. He is nimble. When you hear his name you think of consummation, ultimate pleasure, Dionysian joy. He has hooves. You’re guessing that I’m talking about Pan, the randy forest satyr. But you’re wrong—it’s actually a horse of which I speak. The horse is named Giant Finish, and he is the most recent entry...

  American Giant began with an epiphany. “People are tired of products made far away from home—they are looking to be more connected to the things they use every day and the people who make them,” founder and CEO Bayard Wintrhop explained to Esquire at American Giant’s launch.     American Giant makes hoodies. Based in San Francisco, Winthrop and Phillipe...

  When the cattle are loaded up and the auctioneer retires, the livestock hall in Ripley, West Virginia takes on new life. In the summer gloaming, you can just make out the form of a pick-up truck as it rolls into the back lot. A door slams. Boots click. A roof note lingers as a fiddler plucks his string. Bodies disappear...

There is a candy shop on Boylston Street. Grace says something happened. Before it is called the Boston Marathon Bombing or the Patriot’s Day Bombing it is, simply, What Happened in Boston. I watch the initial videos on silent because it seems vulgar or voyeuristic. Grace asks if they are scary. “Yeah,” I say. There’s a photograph of the candy shop....

Today, we decided we would stop. We took off our shoes, we did not go to work, we forgot about our cars. We sat down on the couch with our books. We pored over our books, and as we slipped in the chapters, we realized that we were experiencing pleasure. Here are the books we read.   Green Girl + Here’s...

Windsor was going to see the girl with men in her hair. The pharmacy was dark. Everywhere else on Church Avenue was lit up: Rainbow Clothing Store, No Pork Indian Restaurant, the Amoco gas station, the Western Union, the broken-down van with spices and the old vendor’s swollen feet inside. As he walked towards it, Windsor felt his skin turn neon. He...

​ “Todos van a pensar que es una bruja,” my grandmother would frantically tell my mother. At a very young age, it became apparent that I was left-handed. My grandmother worried no school would take me left-handed because they would all think I was a bruja, an evil female spiritually linked to el Diablo who holds a vast knowledge of malevolent...

Click “I Need an Abortion,” and you will be led through a medical consultation and referred to a licensed doctor who will ensure that a medical abortion pill is delivered to you. On Womenonweb.org the caveat is that the doctor can only help the patient if she lives in a country where access to safe abortion is restricted, is less than 9...

​ David Longstreth’s songs don’t explain him; they imitate him. The creative force and leader of The Dirty Projectors, Longstreth has founded a career on a stubbornly quirky approach. He formed the band in 2000 as a solo project while he was a freshman at Yale, but he dropped out soon, recording so much in his dorm room that he barely...

  “The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.” – Aleister Crowley Former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, and the occasion to consider her ghost is nigh. The spirit of Thatcher animates many legacies, but one revenant (swirling, perhaps, with those of Nixon and Reagan) murmurs still that...

Genesis Sanchez, a senior at Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex, moved to Providence with her mom from the Dominican Republic when she was in fifth grade. Neither of them spoke English. They’ve lived in seven different houses in as many years. Carmen Tavarez, Genesis’ mother, explains that they immigrated to the US for better opportunities: “I was working in my country almost...

  Parks & Historical Recreation Here lies Mills End Park. A cup of soil, two feet in diameter, sitting between opposing lanes of Portland, Oregon traffic, a small gangly pine tree poking its head into the air. And across the pond, 5,000 miles away, Prince’s Park. A soft hamlet of grass, three handsome trees—Faith, Hope, Chairty—and a small bench parked in the middle...