About this issue
Blending poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and reviews, Volume 6 (2022) showcases the wide-ranging voices that define San Antonio Review. From sharp short stories and meditative haiku to essays on culture, faith, and society, this issue explores the personal and the political with equal urgency. Featuring new and established writers alongside striking visual art and critical reviews, it offers readers an expansive, thought-provoking journey across genres and forms.
art
fiction
My Normal Heart
This sounds narcissistic, but every few months, when I have a quiet moment, I like to take out my electrocardiogram and look at it. Oh, it is entirely normal, and maybe that is the point. I marvel at the tall narrow QRS complexes marching regularly…
Fetch
“Does anybody have a maxi pad? Aunt Flo came to visit, like a thief in the night.” “What? Shh,” I say, alarmed. Thank goodness Dad isn’t in the van with Denise Stitcher screeching about her period, as though this is something people talk about. Our…
Three Strings
After that kid shot me in the face outside Club Twelve, after the team of surgeons took an hour to dig that tiny resin ball out of the soft tissue in my cheek, after my mom cried in the hospital room when she saw the…
Pinning Hercules
Summer. The most dangerous season in Texas. Remy watched a praying mantis decapitate a brown-spotted grasshopper. The grasshopper’s body twitched as the praying mantis devoured everything except the legs. The fed praying mantis retreated into the bristle grass and Remy collected the grasshopper legs with…
To Cristal Two
The steps were simple: first, knock on the door; then you have two options: if someone answers, you tell them you are looking for Rodney Steele, that you’re there for his drains. We were dressed as plumbers. After they tell you they are not Rodney…
Faith Journeys
The parking lot outside the mega-church was only half-full. Behind it a big sky, almost uncluttered by high-rises. Ruth didn’t even know this area existed until a couple of months ago. Now the drive up here had become their new rhythm, and she made sure…
The Curse
“Roberto, not again,” said Josephina Burgos, groaning. “How many times must you tell this story?” “But we love this story, Papi!” cried Ofelia. “Please tell it again, just this one time!” Roberto took a sip of instant coffee from his mug and stared thoughtfully at…
Zoom Healing
Mike’s audio connected to Zoom and what had been a budding cynicism now bloomed. New-age Indian flute music and a synthesizer beat whistled through the speakers. The teacher’s screen showed a stone buddha, the fat and happy one, resting atop a bookshelf. It looked down…
nonfiction
FíorScríobh
Fíor Schríobh is a virtual exhibition on Instagram documenting the fascinating bilingual street signs of Dublin city and shining a light on the beautiful ancient Irish script seen on these signs. The word is pronounced feer-SHCREE-uv in the Irish language (Gaeilge) and means True (Fíor)…
Tenderness and Rot, or Why I Should Be Allowed to Burn Down the Peabody
The Yale Peabody Museum’s ornithology laboratory struggles mightily to enforce separation between “observer and observed,” as all good Western scientists must. And yet, mocking the laboratory’s attempts at sterility, the smell that lingers inside refuses any such boundaries. The bitter, stale scent infused my hair…
In Pursuit of Distance
When is a secret no secret at all? Magic — stage magic of the sort that makes elephants disappear — relies on the best efforts of the pyrotechnician and the orchestra and the lighting designer. There is pomp and there is circumstantial evidence of a…
A Match Made in Private
Online dating has become a widespread feature of modern social life. In less than two decades, seeking partners through commercial intermediaries went from being a marginal and stigmatized practice to being a common activity. How can we explain this rapid change and what does it…
The Real Sickness in America
What vile alchemy has enabled many Americans, with Texans in the vanguard, to conjoin a stated belief in God with a total commitment to a serial liar and a reliance on instruments of death? Even when children are murdered in the nation’s schools, the same…
Quality of Life
It’s called the Doctrine of Double Effect, a philosophical conundrum but with real-life implications. For a doctor, it means that you are permitted to do something that on its face is wrong if it is morally the right thing to do. It means that you…
The Third Pomelo
In Dallas, the sky was big and blue and the air was thin, as if in the mountains. I felt a slight dizziness during my two days there, staying in a room on Gaston Avenue. It was December, a couple weeks before Christmas. My host was bald,…
Obsidian Fields
I was twenty-one years old the summer Elaine and I backpacked into Three Sisters Wilderness. I was an urban creature, from a long line of same. My grandparents had emigrated from Greece and Italy, landed in the Bronx, and never went farther. They were factory…
On Meeting Alexander Calder: An Essay
He wore a hardhat and mustard-colored overalls, a working man’s uniform like the other men on the site. His demeanor said he was the one in charge. A small crew of younger guys looked to him for direction as their towering crane slowly inched elephantine…
poetry
interviews
reviews
Book Review: “Never Forget Your Name: The Children of Auschwitz”
Today, more than seventy-five years after the liberation of the concentration camps and roughly sixty-five years after the closure of the last of the DP camps in Germany, we find ourselves at a juncture in history that one would be tempted to call unprecedented —…
Book Review: “In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy”
Liberalism! The great empty hole in many radicals’ understanding of the political spectrum. In many respects, we treat it like a fact of life, like the weather, but also as something ephemeral, something that will just go away as soon as the real shit, the…
Book Review: “Lost in Obscurity and Other Stories”
Lost in Obscurity and Other Stories by Debasish Mishra (2022) is both touching and bittersweet. This book is not just a “collection” of disjointed short stories but rather a clever coordination that tie events and characters together. For example, Chottu and Raju, two childhood friends…