by Jackson Arn The best thing about a painting is that no two people ever paint the same one. They could be sitting in the same garden, staring at the same tree in the same light, poking the same brush in the same pigments, but in the end none of that matters. The two hypothetical…

by Jackson Arn It was my husband’s idea to steal the boxes—he’s the daring half of our compound brain. He spends most of the day drafting letters to committees worldwide, never emails. Education has always been important to him. His parents saw to it that he learned something about everything. Now he sits in bed,…

by Jackson Arn To ease the days’ constipation, I tried exercise. At first I jogged, but jogging was less interesting than the park I was supposed to jog through. I did pushups. These also proved less interesting than I had hoped. Sit-ups were an okay compromise between ignoring my phone and giving it my full…

by Jackson Arn They hired me as a go-between. The interview was quick. Jazz on the bar. Fake palms. Pantomimed whirls everywhere. The handshake lingered for a week. By then I’d been promoted and had no time for protégés. Smoke hid me from the noise. The billboard stared back. Cars whispered through their hurry. It…

by Jackson Arn They marched us to a room with yellow walls and tables painted pink, like our uniforms so we could sit and disappear. We wandered by tiles and corners, carrying the stink of desperation. A chair caught me, because it thought I needed something old to steady me, and it had the canniness…

by Jackson Arn This could all be circular. Not self-swallowing like the staircase from the poster, I mean circular as in smooth rows of endless smooth stacks perpendicular to pain, touching on a plane but only one, so air bubbles and grains of sand left in the loaf remember their orders and lend a noble…

by Jackson Arn When Harold Haber was released from prison, he found out why nobody had visited him in two years. His brother, sister, mother, father, grandmother, uncle, and cousins had died. He and his grandfather were the last two Habers left in the country, maybe the world. His grandfather was 89 years old and…

by Jackson Arn   I: Bubbles   Not knowing they’re impossible, they slip through geometry or fitting, go squarish where they must, kissing the rainbow mouths to right-left-up-down from here to death.   Bathing in clones, each holds, with skin and neighbors, a secret breath.

by Jackson Arn Brutal Aesthetics, the second volume of art criticism by Hal Foster to come out this year, begins at the close of World War Two, when the human race was fine-tuning some clever new ways of killing itself. Nuclear war; totalitarianism; genocide on an industrial scale; the gnawing despair of living with all…

by Jackson Arn Slurs have a way of mellowing into labels. History is full of Yankees and Cockneys, Methodists and Jesuits, Whigs and Tories, who steal a term of abuse and apply it to themselves as an act of sardonic revenge. Sometimes the tactic works too well, and people forget that the word was ever…

by Jackson Arn You are waiting for me to do something. I can tell because your eyes have the look cheap mirrors get when the edges rust and curl and there is nothing to do but throw them out. You’re powerless, yes, but at least not alone, if that makes it better. In fact your…

by Jackson Arn It used to be the guilty fantasy of theory bros and voluntary beggars. When turning points expired or wavered they’d hold it to their chests at night, a Molotov they didn’t dare ignite: Could revolution, usually so plodding, be brought about by some proud, precise Nothing? By standing very still and thinking,…

by Jackson Arn Writing seriously about comedy is a thankless challenge. Only an idiot, or somebody who’s used to thankless challenges because he’s a freelance critic, would bother. The risks are high, the rewards low. Overanalyze your subject and you’ll kill it. Treat it too indulgently and you’re left with a jumble of second-hand bits.…