...Tobias Menely Considering examples from Benjamin, Marx, and Hobbes, “Anthropocene Air” reflects on the conceptual difficulty that the atmosphere, the Earth’s gaseous envelope, poses for a materialist account of history. Against the backdrop of the systemic condition definitive of the Anthropocene...

...Michael Martin Shea © 2012 by Virginia Tech 2012 Michael Martin Shea Eight Months in Buenos Aires as Still Life with Skull poem opens with a line from Erin Belieu’s “At Last” In the end, what you loved moves across seasons, so you think about winter break...

... are afraid, then, when you finally drag yourself from the tile and stumble outside the sun is setting and the air feels just a little different? I have. And do you know what you must do with the changed air? You must understand it is of the Lord. We are never who we were, yet the Lord, like the dead...

... denim. How should I know where your daddy hides his smokes, he said, so the little girl scratched at her pale see-through skin, Y’all boys like fire, I’ll show you fire. She laughed a laugh that was almost a cough. First the cold air inside. Then the brine and shrimp stink, from the tank...

... Kerr . Mayewski Paul . 2010 . “ Glacial Terroir .” Interview. Edible Geography . October 8 . www.ediblegeography.com/glacial-terroir . Menely Tobias . 2014 “ Anthropocene Air .” minnesota review , no 83 : 93 – 101 . NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

... this. When we finally received city privileges, my one friend, Laksha, and I went to a bar, a mist-filled, metallic room, faint synthetic beats hanging in the air. After a few beers, I began talking to anyone I could about memsims, how I was just on the precipice of greatness, and how close I was to creating...

... or love, but neither free. For want of human touch, massage chairs recline foolish at every parlor. Andaman Sea strikes a funereal note—If only I could cut the air and midwife a sunrise, before which I'll fall to my knees, not praying, but offering myself untethered from life...

... into the garden, down the pebbled path that winds through arches of well-trained ivy, wisteria, and sweet peas. The air is thick and wet, a physical thing you have to push through, even with the wind still blowing to the east. In a few weeks the okra will be ready, the cucumber, the heirloom tomatoes...

...Chelsea Dingman © 2017 Chelsea Dingman 2017 Chelsea Dingman Girl in the Sky My mother is the ice field there in the distance, flat on her back, sheltering the frozen prairie. My daughter is an arc of lightning in a starless sky, limbs slicing the air...

... after all), three chick- ens, countless outdoor cats, and whole barns of horses add up to? Life cycles of learning compassion and neglect. II. Lizards compress their lungs as they sprint, squeezing the air alternately with each twist of their bodies. Once, my sister and I let our bearded dragons loose...

... for their candidates were awakened by knocks on their doors in the middle of the night. “We’re looking for houses,” the people said when the others opened their doors into the night air. “We buy homes! Fair prices. Cheap fees.” And when residents realized that people simply were stumbling...

.... The absurdity is in the repetition. But still. Be still. I believe embodied. You bring your own laughter as if to the pealing sea. The boiled egg before you isn t spring, but the white circle that comes round to death. Quiet now as if the door is opened into the violent air. Will you permit me to cry with you...

... and didn’t want the first thing he saw to be his father. Not today. “Wake up, boys.” There was no ignoring that tone, so Eliot opened his eyes. Sherwood leaned against the doorframe, his breath ghosting into the air. Hard as an axe handle, Sherwood had an abundance of black hair on his...

... on to jump onto the porch in a sitting position. The railing was still there, but just hanging into the air. You could see clear under the house. Miss Claudia held a cigarette in one hand, scratching with the other. She was swinging her legs where the steps once stood...

... is a dot that went for a walk, I cannot tell. What I can say is that it helped me understand writing an idea forced into fresh air, a thought out on a walk, meeting other thoughts or forming temporary relationships. This retro- minnesota review 99 (2022) DOI 10.1215/00265667-9993223 © 2022 Virginia Tech...

... hands in the air and the room explodes in one voice that is high pitched and booming at the same time. The girls are singing their school’s hymn. It’s an upbeat, fast song that talks about hard working students who walk to school through sun, rain, and snow with their heavy schoolbags...

... know Oscar doesn’t have the where- withal to put a decent supper in a bucket for himself.” We’d had this talk before. “And besides, you know I like taking the evening air.” “Thought you were all done in from working up at Siebert’s all day.” “I like the air.” “What about my...

..., as if he were holding and being held up. The air breaks open— sun spreads through the dust. His partner walks out and hears the older man's breath, the sifting sound of air in charred lungs, and drops his hands, carbon-black, to a spot on the older man's back...

... sink and held her hands under the high-pressure nozzle, then began a limp-wristed shaking of them. “Paper towels, please,” Carolyn said. “I prefer to air-dry.” Melody was now swaying her body in imitation of an Indian bharata natyam she’d seen on the Discovery...

... wrist out for me to read the time myself. For his part, my dad yakked endlessly to no one about the price of gas or the feasibility of a national health care sys- tem just to fill the air with noise. Now I take BART and go on my own. It’s much better. At my third checkup since finishing...