Mailing List


Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

290 MILES TO GO   I am on the train now There are 290 miles to go From the window I can see people watching me from the streets and fields as the train speeds past They all appear to be wearing tight white tennis shorts and occasionally, when I look closely, I can see a deep red blooming at their crotches, spreading out across the tops of their legs They wave their arms very high in the air but for no real reason that I can discern There’s no panic or pleading on their faces, they aren’t crying for help All I can assume is that it’s some sort of dance, favoured by the people living in this part of the country Perhaps a ritual associated with the passing train, a means of protection against its speed and bulk After all, talismans do drip from their stiff cotton cuffs, mystical symbols are scratched into the dirty sand by their platformed feet   I see animals too of course Cows and sheep Horses with chestnut backs as reflective as mirrors They move along with the train like a pack of estate agents let loose, finding that their legs stretch much further than they thought Until they reach their limit of course, they hit a fence or a hedgerow or their lungs contract impossibly Then the train speeds away and I leave them behind Goodbye herds! I whisper Farewell beasts! I’ll probably never see the same set of sheep and horses and cows again   I am going to be 290 miles away for some time   WHEN I FIRST ENCOUNTER THE TRAIN I HAVE ALREADY BEEN EXHAUSTED BY THE STATION   I had waited to board the train next to a dusty crowd of people The platform stretched for two and a half miles and the sun maliciously heated the bleached concrete below us I hopped from one foot to the other to prevent the rubber soles of my plimsolls melting and sticking to the ground and most of the other people around me did the same, avoiding eye contact as we soundlessly pranced and waited The heat had

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

READ NEXT

feature

July 2011

Herat

Sam Duerden

feature

July 2011

At Kabul airport, a man I mistook for a foreigner.   A security guard, red-haired with blue eyes and...

fiction

Issue No. 2

The Surrealist Section of the Harry Ransom Center

Diego Trelles Paz

TR. Janet Hendrickson

fiction

Issue No. 2

To Enrique Fierro and Ida Vitale—   Just like you, muchachos, I didn’t believe in ghosts, and if I’d...

feature

April 2017

Symbols Made Me Hardcore

Joe Bucciero

feature

April 2017

‘A Sound System, like the property of any system, is the interaction of the sum of its parts.’ —...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required