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Chillsynth.

"I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, ‘Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?’ ” —Julia Ward Howe via

"And then, something no one expected from a Hungarian inauguration: the Gypsy Anthem, performed by the Sükösd Roma Child Choir, a group of children from a small town of 3,000 people in southern Hungary."

"Extraordinary Premises

I saw an angel in a teacup on a screen.
The Invisible Hand slaughtered it.

Demand evolved to give us inner tubes and blue eyes.
Fireworks libate the billboard behind our house. Relentlessly, the markets provide
magic. We overhear many die quietly, and felt like commercials

for hearths lit by fake logs. The faux-hissing
of screens puzzled me. The extraordinary premises
the ordinary. I wore my palm

like an eye patch to silence the migraine, and stood
near the rotting wood window like a screened seraphim,
a girl on film making pain precious.

I pimped my pain-peonies for socil media.
Later, a wise screen told me that starlings take turns
sitting on eggs, though the mom always nominates
herself for the night shift.

The surgeon said do not run, do not bend, do not move
except to get water or go potty. If you can't follow instructions, no one
can help you. A screen told me two cute
radiologists read my film wrong.

I wore a fake log to the wake for my third
misdiagnosis. We overheard an eye patch telling a teacup
demand had evolved into a mother-like figure.
My stitches kept getting infected. My peonies
acquired some fungi. A screen sold me

a pain angel of positivity.
Only death and this little stool for company.
I stayed lit for the starlings on night shifts.

—Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies (2025)

"People talk to each other over video phones and watch streaming television services (the German silent movie channel) while they also listen to big bands (Eddie Heywood and his Orchestra) playing on the radio live from the rooftops of New York hotels as if it were 1939."