After Antonín Dvořák Mvt. I: Allegro in / the belly / of / the woods / we toss kindling into a pit // jagged geometry /of combustion // strike matches on our skin //watch the campfire work / its teeth through mountain blackness // & I am incendiary // north windlurching / in from / upper / […]
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a hue of hospital neon sits above exposed cotton guts of waiting room sofa in the early hours of my procession, morning orange draws a halo around my pale head. there’s a field in the midwest where be a man still echoes off the corners of tick-painted weeds resting atop a cliff overlooking a shallow marsh. it is too late to go back, one of the […]
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after Anne Sexton’s “Yellow” When I finally feel safety again I’ll work it around in my mouthuntil it’s all balled up, I’ll spit it out, I’ll bury it shallow in a loamy field. I’ll plant a shield of sunflowers around it, I’ll encircle them with apricotpits, I’ll pluck every downy feather in sight, I’ll write a poem called Feral […]
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The phrase “sacrée frangine” is so idiomatic to French that it is impossible to translate it into English with exactitude. The word “sacrée” literally translates to “sacred”, but paired with a substantive, it becomes equivalent to the expression “a hell of a”, while “frangine” (informal) means “sister”. A “sacrée frangine” is a “sacred sister” and […]
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IMAGINE I’M SMALL. IMAGINE I’M SO SMALLYOU COULD POP ME IN YOUR MOUTH & I’D SLEEP UNDER YOUR TONGUE. THINK A CROSS BETWEEN TIC-TACS AND HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS, BUT SEXY. TOGETHER WE’D TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY, ABOUT THE WEATHER. WE’D DREAM OF CAMPFIRES, WHETHER BAGEL BITES ARE REALLY AS GOOD AS WE REMEMBER. IN THIS STORY, I’M SMALL BECAUSE […]
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Erin Kirsh is queer, Jewish writer and performer living in Vancouver. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in The Malahat Review, EVENT, Cosmonauts Avenue, Geist, and The Molotov Cocktail, where she won their Shadow Award for poetry. Visit her at www.erinkirsh.com.
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I want to love / her accident / her teeth chipped on my name / her body quaked a fidget / tossing witchbones in the cinder / at night we sleep / we wink / we razor-slick the ceiling / board a crossfixed longing / creased with heat / at night she smears my lips […]
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everyday we cross over green water each step slow and heavy with stirring traffic is both ha — lting and out of breath, here a suspension nest — led in the light and still touching concrete this walk on the early hall, each socketed — morning on our eye — lids gauze light begins stubborn opening its face bit by bit wait […]
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I Am The Rain I am the rain. I travel barefoot from country to country.Wind plays in my hairwith its slender, brown hand. My thin spider web dressmore gray than suffering.I am alone. Only occasionallyI play with a sick deer. I hold strings in my handsheathed with all the tears ever loosened from a pale girl’s mouth. […]
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Meena Alexander has a conversation with literary ghosts in her posthumous poetry collection, In Praise of Fragments. The writings and drawings in this book depict nonlinear, speculative bits about what it means to be alive, present, and home. She invites us on her exploration of the soul in her last few years of life. Many […]
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1. The people I know from home meet the people I know from here and I become two different people at once. I code switch mid-sentence. I have spent the last two years speaking in a learned accent. Is my real voice a perfect mix of what I was given and what I have learned? […]
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I renounce rice when I am nine, the way one might renounce Barbie dolls, or multiplicationsheets, or vocabulary quizzes—unpretentious, without pomp. Baba continues to serve me braised pork belly and tomatoes with egg, eyes soft like steamed gingered fish, never once picking at thehaggard bones of autumn: how I unearthed dead silkworms from the garden, or how I would […]
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should i learn pythonshould i buy a praying mantis should i start wearing pendants am i a pendant idiot now am i getting the hang of it or being annoying? is it a nail or a needle in my eye andshould i trap the little ghostliving in the weird room in the basement we never go in or talk […]
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you slip out the open door of my spine. when i pass you in dim-lit hallways, my fingers brush your wrists, lingering, unbodied. i dream of you – perched in air, eyes strange and diya-limned. my throat is still cupped between your hands. i do not take it back. i dream of girlhood: unhesitant, unblinking. saying, relentlessly. – i […]
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Crimen de un corazón que no recuerdo 1 I want to feel the serenity a normal person does when they walk along the beach or maybe hire a dream hitman To everyone who had the misfortune of being born on my birthday—i was born on march 24, 1982 at 5 a.m.—and they flew black steamers […]
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Emily as Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire by Darren C. Demaree is exactly the bright, crackling ode that its title suggests. Emily is a dynamic shapeshifter, assuming nature’s many forms, from human to flower to debris. The poems in this collection are certainly heavy with the stumbling navigation of love and vulnerability, but they […]
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Octavia Tomyn describes herself as an extreme extrovert who loves meeting people as part of her work. It also seems like she loves representing people as part of her work. Her Instagram page shows hundreds of human figures, sketched in a single black line, but which still depict a strong individuality and subtle emotion. Octavia […]
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To celebrate the end of the year, our team wanted to share some of the things we enjoyed reading most during 2019. Clémence Chouteau, Art Editor: 5 BOOKS I READ IN 2019 THAT I WILL KEEP THINKING ABOUT FOR YEARS 1. THE WATER CURE, SOPHIE MACKINTOSH (2019) “We hold hands very tightly, so we can […]
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We’re thrilled to announce our nominees for the 2019 Pushcart Prize: El Bahr, El Barh, El Bahr by Leena Aboutaleb Gloria In Excesis Dyke by Levi Cain Distilling Discomfort by Hadiyyah Kuma Mom by Heo Su-gyeong translated by So J. Lee Birthright by Natalie Wee One Day I Will Drink the Whole Sky by Cynthia […]
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Carissa Potter Carlson‘s work creates a strange, cathartic experience. A feeling of intrusion, as if you were reading a stranger’s thoughts, but also, a feeling of vulnerability, as if at the same time, that stranger were reading yours. Her art relieves loneliness by showing things everyone experiences but no one talks about, from small embarrassments […]
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Dawn Excavation The sun has not yet arrived butit will come here I am certain of that much Look at the sky changing every twenty seconds Light moves like the terror of women in a village about to be attacked by enemy troops When the sun takes aim from its siege of the sky it […]
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Awe-inspiring, thoughtful and honest, Gillian Conoley’s selection of poems in A Little More Red Sun on the Human engages us in observation and conversation about the wild state of the world. Her work encourages analysis of the meaning of our lives as humans, our place in constructed society and forced imposition on nature. The weight […]
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His long arms are warm and it is one a.m.some galloping horse traveling to me from the lapping midnight of a recent orgasm and I am out of breath this worknight— his death, the garnet dancer that lurks in all my most winking brights. On the pillow where our heads rest, nose to nose, screw […]
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split my lip for the innocence i knowlies beneath: i think i almost drownedthis summer & the swimming pool wherei tried is on fire now. this body feelsstrange & hollow, halfway between anexhale & something else. i want sunsets.i want rooftops. i want to be uninhabitable,light falling through an open window. need to be something […]
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I would like to believe we live forever, and when I say forever,I mean we live longer than our favorite song.Don’t let anyone tell you forever has to feel so guilty, so strained, a cauterized theory of letting go.I haven’t the language to hope you get home safely,but I have the muscle memory of holding […]
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after Neko Case When I find the morning I pull it from the groundand whisper an invocation. Across these counties, I’ve left myself motherless, let myself bear the name emergency when I kick up dust. The name ghost when I’m out of breath. But even in this apocalypse every constellation bears your name. And in […]
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Once, very drunk, I read aloud a poem about lov[ing you] after a friend had just vomited all over the comforter and was moaning guts. I thought: I’ll show her how shame can laugh at itself, bare on a pulpy blanket. Look; it’s just us, bags of bile, hanging out. Besides, dim rooms are for […]
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Danielle Morgan sees things most people don’t see, and turns them into art. Danielle lives in Stockholm, but she was born in a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. Her attention to detail brings the light on small, everyday occurrences of beauty : the shape of a hair-tie, arms […]
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اما که اما که دید سال– با چند بنفشه به دنیا آمد ؟کی که تشنگی. شیرین بود : دورم از یاد نمیداری – به هدر رفته جوانیمپوستی شگرف – اما ! چسبیده به تو ، جوانی دیگر اینجا که بسنده بود . چند بنفشه به پوشاندن دهانه چاه And Who? And who saw the yearwas […]
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Speech, a reflective and well-timed new work by Jill Magi, is quite possibly the delicate walkthrough of life that so many of us secretly wish we had. The speaker serves as a flawlessly observant guide on a linguistic journey, giving us both foresight and hindsight as we wander along a path that is at once […]
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We’re thrilled to announce our nominees for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology. Nonfiction: “Fabric Wound and Unwound” by Tasneem Maher “Fear: A Collage” by Ronny Ford Poetry: “Gaslight” by Christian J. Collier “Yolk” by Cris Iacoponi “On Being Read My Miranda Rights in My Own Hallway”by Linette Reeman “At Beiteddine, Summer 2018” by […]
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Özlem Bir gece,Gecede bir uyku..Uykunun içinde ben..Uyuyorum,Uykudayım,Yanımda sen. Uykunun içinde bir rüya,Rüyamda bir gece,Gecede ben..Bir yere gidiyorum,Delice..Aklımda sen. Ben seni seviyorum,Gizlice..El-pençe duruyorum,Yüzüne bakıyorum,Söylemeden,Tek hece. Seni yitiriyorumÇok karanlık bir anda..Birden uyanıyorum,Bakıyorum aydınlık;Uyuyorsun yanımda..Güzelce. Yearning A night, At night, a sleep.. Inside the sleep, me.. I’m sleeping, I’m asleep, By my side, you. Inside the sleep, a […]
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Slingshot by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a turbulent debut collection that should be on every fall reading list. His poems demonstrate skillful navigation of what it is like to see the world through queer black eyes, opening all other eyes to the alternate visibility and invisibility of this existence, the dangers of being seen by […]
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How would you describe your artistic style? Versace + Arby’s. Tammy Faye Messner + Honey Boo Boo + the Virgin Mary. Key West + Manhattan + the Research Triangle + Hell. Who / what inspires you to create? In terms of who, definitely my partner and my family/friends and other writers/artists I admire. But in […]
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When a home loses its ability to comfort, a person can be left not just searching for a place of safety but also asking what safety really means. Stephen Furlong’s debut chapbook, What Loss Taught Me, approaches such seemingly intractable topics with courage and grace. Taking on experiences of abuse and loss, Furlong shifts adeptly between […]
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Hannah Cohen’s poetry collection Bad Anatomy shows us how our world looks when we hold it in vine-wrapped hands, at once a fragile ball and a strong snare. Read this book to be inspired to look at the world through new eyes, with a fresh stop-to-smell-the-roses vision. Cohen’s very first poem is about everything she […]
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For many artists, the question of how to create in the era of climate change is difficult to answer. Caroline Dare has some ideas. Caroline is a 25-year-old American photographer currently living in New Zealand. Her body of work ranges from monochrome portraits to colorful, almost surrealistic scenes, from carefully composed pieces to fleeting moments […]
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Katie: I’ve read What Runs Over a few different ways now– straight through, with pauses, and at random, and it works every which way. The way you work with pace and temper creates this tension that holds a reader and is deeply unsettling throughout. The conversation between pieces, the movement through themes, the return to place and […]
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Marlena Chertock stunned us once before with her poems in “On that one-way trip to Mars,” and now she returns with another astronomical collection, “crumb-sized.” Familiar topics return with new flair and detail, teaching us more about blackbodies and exoplanets, and imparting more awareness on personal issues like dysplasia and queer life. One of her […]
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Where are you from? Columbus, OH What are your hobbies? I’m usually creating something, photography, dance, and I’m always up for trying something new! What kind of dance have you done? I did Jazz and lyrical in high school and then I choreographed in an organization called Ayo at Cedarville University. When did you start […]
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I am supposed to be drunk. I am supposed to be a frat boy/super fly/machismo extraordinaire. I am supposed to be flirty, confident, and sexy especially after four shots of tequila. I no longer want to perform this pantomime of bodily aggression. I no longer want the world to be a stage on which I […]
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How do your surroundings influence your style and practice? I’ve been very lucky to live in some super inspiring cities over the years. Bristol, Berlin, Belfast (I only seem to live in cities beginning with B) Each city has had an amazing illustration community to connect with. Feeling part of something like that really helps […]
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The first of these is the NAIL FILE, the very one Grandmother Virginia took across the ocean with her from Puerto Rico to New York, to her aunt in the candy shop with striped windows. Virginia wouldn’t finish high school until she was in her fifties, but she knew how to raise the file two […]
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SET THE STAGE: the Drowning Children + me in a habitat of natural childhood: THE J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, where models stand pinned in glitzy dead butterflies, wings spread, a graveyard of history. We are young, and the net age between us and the statues could cradle our grandparents in its palms. We are young, […]
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Nicole Lane: Where are you from? When did you begin illustrating? Nanna Prieler : I was born in a small, idyllic village in the mountains of southern Austria. Growing up in this traditional kind of fairytale world made me a very romantic person who has been obsessed with drawing ever since. I went away to an art […]
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things i wish i could tell my father i. stop haunting my dreams. i don’t want you there because it feels so comfortable when you’re around and i hate being comfortable around something you did. ii. why did you do that to my sisters but never me? why was i so different? iii. all my […]
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Where are you from? How did you begin your painting practice? I’m from Northfield Minnesota, a lovely small town less than an hour south of the Twin Cities. I had the great fortune of being born into a family of artists. My parents are potters and my dad is also a high school art teacher […]
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I first encountered Ollie Schminkey’s work about two months into my first serious relationship when a friend sent me the link to Schminkey’s “Two Twin Beds.” In that poem I found an articulation of so much of what I had felt completely incapable of communicating. It became a sort of first step for me towards […]
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So I first read your work on Maudlin House and I’m curious: what is your relationship with the poems in that set (wonderfully titled “SOME *DRAKE VOICE* TINGS I WROTE AFTER I THOUGHT FOR A SECOND“)? i tend to write a lot about my anxiety, which, as i’m sure countless others can attest to, is […]
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So you have two chapbooks, rude girl is lonely girl! and Plastic Pajaros (both through pizza pi press) and I hear you have another one forthcoming with Button. What calls to you about chapbooks? And of course I have to ask: can you talk a little about the new collection? I like how small and concentrated […]
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VAGABOND CITY 