The authority to say anything at all
When I was a Catholic teenager, I was an altar server and reader at my parish church. Our parish priest was forward-thinking. At one Easter Vigil Mass, I played the…
Sam Shepard is a place
Ed note: Sam Shepard passed away on July 27, 2017. He was alive at the time this essay was written. Sam Shepard is a place, and in The One Inside…
Conversations: Martín Espada and Giles Li
Martín Espada needs very little introduction. An award-winning poet with twenty published volumes, Martín spent many years as a tenants’ rights lawyer for the Latinx community in Greater Boston. Giles Li…
Letter from Issue 50 guest editor Ricco Siasoco
The collective “I” in Issue 50 of The Critical Flame is one of protest, of comedy, and, hopefully, of the zeitgeist. As the guest editor for this issue, I’ve attempted…
Conversations: DéLana R.A. Dameron with Marcus Amaker, Kendra Hamilton, and Randall Horton
DéLana R.A. Dameron’s second collection of poems Weary Kingdom (2017) is part of the University of South Carolina Palmetto Poetry Series, edited by Nikky Finney. Dameron’s debut collection, How God…
A New Monument
Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA was, until recently, named Lee Park. In 1917, Paul Goodloe McIntire donated the land for the park, as well as the 26-foot monument of Robert…
Metropolitan is Still There
You used to go to Metropolitan alone. You were 21 and it was the closest gay bar to where you lived in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It was a good place if…
Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Decentering Whiteness in Seattle
There was a talk going on about Black Lives Matters at the Seattle Center. For better or for worse, I suppose lately there is always a talk going on about…
Literature is not an Object: Toward an inter-“Activism”
“Leap and dance, ye living buildings—” —Shaker hymn I’m not writing this, and you’re not reading it. Because, how am I going to describe it, the beloved unspeakability, especially of what…