2022 Open Mouth Retreat: “an entire weekend full of community-building, generative writing workshops, and conversations between faculty members and small groups of participants. The Retreat fosters a welcoming space for poets to dive deeper into writing and generate new, challenging work … with faculty Alison C. Rollins and Paul Tran, hosted virtually June 10-12.” “The cost […]
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Highlighting recently released works by marginalized creators Beast at Every Threshold by Natalie WeeDescription from Arsenal Pulp Press: An unflinching shapeshifter, Beast at Every Threshold dances between familial hauntings and cultural histories, intimate hungers and broader griefs. Memories become malleable, pop culture provides a backdrop to glittery queer love, and folklore speaks back as a […]
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pause obsess rewind porn star Calvin Bankskneeling leaning back his hips bounce like a buoycaught in a tidal waveof cock muscle curls oh Calvinwhen you study your reflection do you worship the striationsin your chest? absthat cut & pushthrough the amniotic sac of your […]
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I’m just calling you to ask if you have ever scrunchedthe skin under your eyes and made wrinkles in the mirror and felt like you were seeing time? And when you let your eye skinfall back into place, was it like reversing time, like time travel, like being close to The impossible? I’m leaving you […]
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wai po falls sick in penang. through her cracked lips she still calls it pulau pinang,a palate bad-breathed, wu wei-harmonied to her language, the estuaries she carries in the seat of her spine pulau for island, for mooned blisters, volcano soresthere is a rhythm to dying bodies. when she bleeds, each scab sculpts a fragile […]
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Artist, spider sculptor, Louise Bourgeois said, “You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.” I remember the last time I spoke to Catherine Lacey in person was at a New Year’s Eve party in Chicago, December 31, 2019. We ate lasagna. The world was different then. […]
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This month’s spotlighted artist is Malí Bilstad (they/them). Currently finishing up their degrees in Illustration and Theater at Iowa State University, Malí is an illustrator creating their own tales of childhood fantasy. By doing this they hope to create worlds that their audience can escape reality from and find themselves in. Who are you as […]
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In high summer, I see lovemost clearly when I’m alone. “Shouldn’t a poet be more romantic?”someone asks me. I ask my heartif it ever thinks of me. This morning, I had breakfast by myselfat the hotel and listened to the lobby pianist. Tourists arrive early to Black Tortoise Park andI thought I saw a couple […]
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When I was four years old and learning to read, my born-again Christian grandfather gifted me a children’s bible. I was unimpressed by this offering because I couldn’t read but the illustrations remain in my mind thirty-five years later, especially the ones involving the gory demise of Jesus at the end of the book. “Who […]
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The neighbours all thought we were con artists. Maybe they were right. We met while waiting to view the apartment and pretended to be sisters to charm the landlord. It was never about influence. It was only about shelter. We just wanted to escape the heat. The ruse was instantly believable, even to us. Our […]
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VAGABOND CITY 