Raena Shirali black magic “This is how everyone in India is brought up—listening to ghost stories.” –Sushil Sharma, The Washington Post Ithe village men fear my evil mouth: so-called daayan feeding on cattle,stirring dust to stifle crops. i am single. have no manto stand his two feet on top of my ground & reassure: […]
Category: Web Edition Archives
Riverbaby, Blaine Ely
Blaine Ely River Baby Her toenails are still painted when we find her. Their fluorescent pink glowing on the ends of pale toes, electric against the river’s edge. I’m walking ahead and see her first, then Trevor—him pushing me away for a better look. Her just lying there, a roadkill stare. The buzzards—a whole storm […]
Talk-to-Me Tina – Scott Fenton
Scott Fenton Talk-to-Me Tina The day before your delivery estimate, you find your very own Talk-to-Me Tina drooling inside her packaging on your front stoop. You’ve lived alone here in your childhood home for two years, but still you’re surprised to see your name on a shipping label and not your father’s. Take out your […]
Reuben Gelley Newman – Frame Loop // Disintegration Loop
Reuben Gelley Newman Frame Loop // Disintegration Loop for Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman; after Peter Zummo and William Basinski [A Tape] William Basinski cradling an old cassette in his hands, hearing the easy melody dis- integrate over the course of an hour as the tape loops on, breaking down as if it were a […]
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Caleb A.P. Parker – Elegy in a Yellow Kitchen
Caleb A.P. Parker Elegy in a Yellow Kitchen I watched my mother drain my father’s— drained, I watched, my latex gloves the same blue as myfather’s lung out of a tube stuck right into his running shoes, and soon I would be sprinting byhis side, the fluid neither blood nor bayou. By and by, we […]
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Elena Sichrovsky – tabernacle
Elena Sichrovsky tabernacle i found god in a piece of gum on the undersideof a table in the back of taco bell he said son what do you have to confess i told him that i say good morning with my front teeth and i liedwhen i said i’d have the rent money by the […]
Rana Tahir – Skirmish
Rana Tahir Skirmish More: the eye that should be shriveled, dust, a lifeless planet, not turning on its axis. The roundness of a woman, open without skin. A man preserved: hunched over— exposed each bone to shape our form. Shoulders stacked inescapable for the most part. The spine: a pattern to build the body. Every […]
Winshen Liu – Lunch at a Tavern
Winshen Liu Lunch at a Tavern The office courtyard has four tables, eachwith four chairs. My coworkers sit one person per table. They are quintessentialAmericans. I think of the time my mother and I shared a reuben,the angular taste of rye bread. She asked what my greatest fear was.Roaches, heights, meaninglessness. I bit into a […]
Robin Gow – Necromancy of My Grandfather
Robin Gow Necromancy of My Grandfather I fill his old hat with hard candies and spill them on the floor of my childhood bedroom / my grandfather died in my bedroom / whiskey bottle in the closet / coat rack after coat rack / bodies like mushroom caps / I always wonder what kinds of […]
Joan Kwon Glass – Crossing
Joan Kwon Glass Crossing My ten-year-old son plays a video of two foxesfrolicking at night. He’s entranced by their downy coats, their ears, too large for their heads, tails like clouds of woodsmoke as they chase one anotherthen collapse together, into a pulsing nest of fur.I don’t remember ever playing like that as a child,ever […]
