Volume IX · No. 3 · Sub-tropical Branch
The Renai Review Bureau, Sub-tropical Branch — a tribunal of small affections, typeset on terracotta cardstock, pinned to a stucco wall.
Reviews of the month — seven small affections, considered.
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile i
The card arrives tan, mailed three weeks late, with two stamps overlapping at the corner. The penmanship is hurried but not unkind. We award four-fifths of a small sun — the kind of warmth that asks nothing back.
Trapezoid · 1.33:1
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile ii
The grey ellipsis appeared, then withdrew, then reappeared like a polite cat. We consider the genre of the unanswered message: a small architecture of three steps, each climbing toward a roof that is not there.
Stepped ziggurat
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile iii
The hum of the toner cartridge made the air feel ceremonial. The glance lasted, by the editor's count, 1.4 seconds. It is now recorded here at considerably greater length than it deserves, which is in fact the correct length.
Wobbly oval
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile iv
She set down a paperback whose spine was glued and re-glued. The novel: minor. The act of moving the bag, so a stranger might sit: not minor. We commend the small mercy and decline to name it.
Tall isoceles
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile v
Cardstock thick enough to feel like furniture. The hand: round, deliberate, recently practiced. The content (we will not transcribe) is interpreted, here, with the courtesy due to a small, freshly made thing.
Half-circle awning
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile vi
There is a literature in voicemails one keeps without listening. We award the silent custody three-and-a-half marigold petals — the deletion costing one whole petal, and possibly worth it.
12-sided polygon
Vol. IX · No. 3 · tile vii
The hand rose, hesitated, completed itself. The window's reflection complicated the count: was it one wave, or two, or one held twice? The Bureau records the affirmative ambiguity and leaves the arithmetic to the platform.
Chamfered rectangle
The standing panel — five hands, occasional disagreement.
Senior Editor
Came to the Bureau from a brief career annotating opera librettos. Insists on the en-dash. Currently rereading Calvino, slowly.
Correspondent
Files mostly from terraces. Believes that punctuation is a form of weather. Reviews short messages, mostly favorably.
Critic-at-Large
Trained as a ceramicist. Considers the photocopier a sacred instrument. Has reviewed the same glance four times in nine years.
Transit Reviewer
Rides the 14, the 22, and the Q. Records small mercies between stops. Carries a yellow notebook and a single oversized earring.
Foreign Desk
Writes from station platforms. Specializes in the courtesies of departure. Counts waves on the second look, not the first.
A small announcement, pinned center.
Volume X · In preparation
The Bureau invites correspondences of no more than two-hundred words on the subject of a small affection — an unanswered text, a returned glance, a borrowed pen never returned, a held door. We do not require a thesis. We require a typeset opinion.
Submissions open Vol. X.
Pinned by the night editor · Memo № 47
Set in Fraunces and Space Grotesk, printed on imaginary terracotta cardstock at the Sub-tropical Branch. Distributed by hand-pin. The Bureau accepts no advertisements and confers no stars.