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January 31, 2022
“Steered by the Reactionary” | What To Do About Feminism
Alexandra Brodsky, Andrea Long Chu, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Becca Rothfeld, Elisa Gonzalez, Jamie Hood, Jess Bergman, Rosemarie Ho
For a long time now, we’ve had the sense that feminism is in trouble. In the years before the pandemic, its most prominent battles — the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Women’s March, #MeToo, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, “Nevertheless, she persisted” — were about figureheads. These days, symbols no longer seem adequate, or even all that meaningful. The professions (teaching, nursing, eldercare) that have been most overtaxed and underprotected during the...
January 26, 2022
“Justice at the Necessary Scale” | An Interview with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Drift Editors
History is moving again. The past two years have felt like an avalanche of breaking news — from the onset of a world-altering pandemic, to a protest movement that upended the public conversation on race and the carceral system, to wildfires and larger-than-ever storms. Meanwhile, power and money continue their seemingly inexorable rise to the top, and the government (Democratic or Republican) advertises its bumbling incompetence on a near-daily basis....
January 27, 2022
Those Who Know | Exterminate All the Brutes and the Limits of Rewriting the Narrative
Nick Martin
An Indigenous woman steps onto a white beach. Several others follow her carefully, winding their way through nearby palm trees and squinting out over warm Atlantic waters. Coming across the horizon is a single rowboat, white hands pulling the oars. The flag adorning the caravel that looms beyond the smaller boat indicates that they are Spaniards. When they reach the shore, a priest blesses the land, claiming it for the...
January 31, 2022
Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot | Against the Contemporary American Essay
Jackson Arn
What the face mask is to American society, the essay is to American literature: deceptively slight, heroically versatile, centuries old but lately a subject of great interest — not because it’s doing anything new, but because everything else is falling apart. The essay, James Wood wrote in The New Yorker, “has for some time now been gaining energy as an escape from, or rival to, the perceived conservatism of much...
January 31, 2022
Joke’s on Them | The Democratic Party Meets Rural America
Nick Bowlin
One evening a few summers ago, I walked from my house to the county fairgrounds. It was a long July day, and the sun still hung above the hills that surround the small western Colorado town where I live. People packed the bleachers of an outdoor arena to watch a rodeo. Shortly before the bullriding began, a rodeo clown strolled to the center of the dirt field and began his...
January 31, 2022
A Little Spectrum-y | What the Autism Diagnosis Says About You
Emer Lucey
Online, someone is wondering if Will Smith is on the spectrum. Jennifer Lawrence? Low-key autistic. So is Matthew McConaughey, though he may be a savant. Thomas Pynchon seems to know a lot about town planning: distinctly spectrum-y. Anna Wintour’s limited diet, love of indoor sunglasses, and exacting standards have Asperger’s vibes. Other things that have been declared autistic-adjacent on Twitter: having an Aquarius moon, dudes in high school who shout...
January 31, 2022
Nothing Like the Sun | Poetry
Daniel Poppick
This is a sonnet about clarity. Some poets say clarity consists of An image they see. Scarlet tanager Rioting on the little branch. Some say It’s what they think. Fuck the fucking police. Others still say it’s a sound. Ding. Drop drip. Who cooks for you. Others want to capture Reality’s fleet disorder, proxy For whatever they believe that to be. I’ll love you forever. Our time is up. I...
January 31, 2022
bye | Poetry
Charles Rybak
we eke the temp we feed the temp we peel ethyl & methyl & thyml & phytyl & heptyl & hexyl we eke the temp we heeze the ppm we bp we exx mc we bhp ltd elegy the elk elegy the ewe the teetee ...
January 24, 2022
The Complete | Fiction
Gabriel Smith
It was the no-summer summer. Nobody had to work so we ate and drank in the streets. We shared stories and videos of mob violence, food shortages, burning buildings, black men beaten or shot to death. The climate changed in faraway places. The Americans ended the endless war. A sleepwalking woman attempted her former commute and stepped in front of a high-speed train. At the Empty Olympics in Tokyo, athletes...