An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions Press, 2022), and a co-editor of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry.
  • For Every Eclipse, A Contradiction

    For Every Eclipse, A Contradiction

    In “For Every Eclipse, A Contradiction,” poet Madeline Lane-McKinley reflects on the history of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle –– and the complicity of those who remain silent.

  • Beyond the End of the World: M.E. O’Brien’s Family Abolition

    Beyond the End of the World: M.E. O’Brien’s Family Abolition

    As one of the left’s most infamously provocative calls, family abolition is often mischaracterized. M.E. O’Brien’s “Family Abolition,” writes Madeline Lane-McKinley, is a corrective and definitive contribution, incisively tracing abolition’s possibilities and opening a view onto utopian horizons.

  • The apocalypse will have beach chairs

    The apocalypse will have beach chairs

    Poet Madeline Lane-McKinley’s “The apocalypse will have beach chairs” observes the end of the world as an accumulation of refuse: a dead seal, bottle caps, and the literary works of Jonathan Franzen.