Celebration of Love: Reading Recommendations
To celebrate Valentine’s day, TNQ has collected a variety of works from our latest issues, 171, 172, and 173. The chosen stories and poems focus on love and relationships in all of their varieties and complexities. These reads will be available, regardless of subscription status, until February 21 for our audience to enjoy!
Poetry
“Swan Dive” by Danielle Hubbard
Revelations come to me
Isn’t this how angels
hang, aerial
and sculpted?
“As a Tree” by Elise Arsenault
She makes a home of any soil, no
matter the pH, the floodwater, the scoff
of the sun, the smoke clouds, the salted
ocean front.
Fiction
Pats shifted beside him, her head on his shoulder, her belly pressed against his side. He reached out with his free hand for one of the chalky heartburn tabs she kept on the bedside. The baby kicked him, hard. Pats breath stayed even. How did she sleep through that? Little bugger was so strong. Maybe it was the kicking that caused her bellyache. Tomorrow he’d look and see if it was in the book.
I’d recognize her. Even when we’re old and my grandfather’s dementia finds its way down to me. Even when the sun finally has enough and burns itself out and the world is cast into eternal darkness. Even when we find June on the other side with the ancestors, I’ll still be able to pick Sarah out just by the feel of her hand in mine and the way her lips curl over the sound of my name.
“Almost Sexual” by Glenn Willmott
It was the first erotic thing I’d ever read, the seduction, the sex. I read it over and over again. I imagined myself being seduced by a charming countess. Of course, I did not imagine myself as an undersized ten-year old with a bowl cut.
Essays
“You Are Not Forgotten” by Elizabeth Ruth
I began to think about Barbara beyond the walls of her institution, about our relationship, which led quickly to our common heart—her mother, my grandmother, who was the closest person to me after my own mother. A second parent, and a soft place to land.
Writer At Large
“Chai – A Homecoming” by Sanjana Srikant
It was a ritual I looked forward to everyday. A simple gesture of love, and perhaps my first foray into caregiving.
I remember every crease on my mother’s face when she smiled all those mornings, years ago, and I see them on my face now. I’m hoping that’s not where the resemblance ends.