Mimi Kusch

Managing Editor at Narrative Magazine

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Articles

Willamette Shipyard Blues | Narrative Magazine

1 month ago | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

after Langston HughesI was lost when they let me outJust my welding gunLost when they let me outJust my welding gunSo I went down to the shipyardWhere it all beganOh they pay me wellI make a small fortuneYes they pay me wellI make a fortuneAnd every other FridayMeet the surgeonSee the sparks all crazyWhere I arc the hullYes the sparks all crazyWhere I arc the hullOne day I’m gonna turn this lightAgainst my skullRead on . . .
Without Courtesy | Narrative Magazine

1 month ago | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

I rode the top of my mother’s musclecar stretched out toward Montauk. I drovefast & dangerous. I ate daddy longlegs that summer. My teeth turned to inkpooling in the gums. Anyone could have written it. Dipped into me. Anyone did. But I wasn’t anyone.
Failure to Appear | Narrative Magazine

1 month ago | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Neighbors, evicted, spin the bald tires of a pickup in the yard-mud, iffy load lidded with a futon. Then they’re gone, the lawn a not-lawn now and a box like a tiny hotel safe hangs from the doorknob. No one recalls being born or seems to long for what it was before memory finally gained purchase on the slick surface of a lot leased us by an agency too distant to drop a check, too anonymous to hold in a single idea. This is clear
Nefertiti by Elizabeth Metzger

1 month ago | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Share Facebook Threads Reddit Forward Print Copy link Your name is a sentence, the beautiful one has come. If my name were a sentenceit would beI make my own misery. Lady of two lands twohands two hearts. In this oneshe is kissingher daughter. In this one I amwonderingif some people are betterthan others. Better at tolerating each other. Already a reader? Sign In
Reasons to Go On | Narrative Magazine

1 month ago | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Share Facebook Threads Reddit Forward Print Copy link New Year’s Day, 2024after Ocean VuongBecause the stream’s awake and it’s making the sound of a thingdoing the only thing it can. Because the glass Christmas balls must come down from the reaches of the silk floss tree,my head among planets. Already a reader? Sign In
Vaquero by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva

Mar 10, 2025 | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

You want to put your darkness in me. All of it. As if it always belonged to me. Ruthlessrattlesnake of a man. Riding shotgun downthe highway, not ashamed. What could possiblypossess you? To think an entire night could fitin me. Slip inside the black sky’s haunches and limbs. The patient stars with their glittery thighs. The forearms. Deep in the heart of Texas. I could ruin you. Spend an afternoon with my headon your chest. The wild-wild-west of you sleeping
What? | Narrative Magazine

Feb 17, 2025 | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Share Facebook Threads Reddit Forward Print Copy link Why say it? That turf’s been soTrodden. Dusty. If not novelReserve it for a thoughtTo oneself. Can you repeat the overstatedAnd have it meanSomethingFor the first time? What’s not the first timeIf each time is the first? Already a reader? Sign In
Some Half-World by Chelsea B. DesAutels

Jan 13, 2025 | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Share Facebook Threads Twitter Reddit Forward Print Copy link What can I say about how the snowis falling this morning, almost imperceptibly? I am a long way from the people I love. Distance, I’m discovering, is betterin the imagination, though my imaginationhas been weak lately, caught Already a reader? Sign In
About Suffering and Other Poems | Narrative Magazine

Nov 18, 2024 | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

Share Facebook Threads Twitter Reddit Forward Print Copy link After Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”how wrong they were, the oldmasters who opened windows and atestale bread and mourned endingsas though there was another wayto return to water. My children’s fatherplaced two cinnamon swirled slicesinto a toaster at midnight and buttered themwith such hard convictionI heard the crack and break evenfrom the upstairs bedroom, wherehe hadn’t slept in months. Already a reader? Sign In
The Trade-Off | Narrative Magazine

Nov 11, 2024 | narrativemagazine.com | Mimi Kusch

As a teenager I became aware of a need to talk to myself.