Fall 2022
Issue 27
Issue twenty-seven invites you to attend a chimeric gathering of wanders, misfits, rebels, playboys, and survivors.
Featuring new short fiction, poetry, CNF, translations, and art from Robert Glück, Julia Kohli (translated by Rob Myatt), Jasleena Grewal, Solomon Samson, Dominic Blewett, Laurie Stone, Stacey Levine, Nina Schuyler, James Warner, Carla Bessa (translated by Elton Uliana), Alvin Lu, Lorelei Bacht, Beatriz Rocha (translated by Grant Schutzman), Réka Nyitrai, David C. Hall, Rolla Barraq (translated by Muntather Alsawad and Jeffrey Clapp), Eva-Maria Sher, Cameron Morse, and Richard Hanus.
Nonie in Excelsis (Excerpt from About Ed)
Robert Glück
“A knock at the door. There stood Nonie’s downstairs neighbor, hands folded and face lifted in pleasure. On second glance she was sixty or so and yes, beautiful.”
you have become an archive.
Lorelei Bacht
“a cardboard box of orange peels, loose
birds, amber trinkets and silent marks.”
thunderclouds
Lorelei Bacht
“how bright the air that expands and
contracts between bodies. questions
of sands and lunar tides. we count”
Panthera onca
Jasleena Grewal
“A jaguar, like a child, indicates the health of a system. It is a keystone. In this pulse place—its body estuarine, current with blood—a jaguar plays like a cat and yolks her hunts.”
The Border
Solomon Samson
“For a while, she stares at him as if he belongs to a race once thought extinct. This is not part of her job. She is just trying to go the extra mile. But the look on the boy’s face tells her that it is not time to slow down.”
On the Things I Did at the End of the World
Beatriz Rocha
Translated by Grant Schutzman
“I went to a used-bookstore and spent exactly 222 reais
(on 14 books, 2 I’d already read, by Chico Buarque)
I went to a beach down South
I kissed a trumpeter with
a cute freckle at a party”
Mistake or Accident
Laurie Stone
“I gave a man I loved a mug, a silk shirt, and a copy of Baudelaire. In time he became better at sex. After he left me, I saw him at a memorial service and wondered if he still had the shirt, the mug, the copy of Baudelaire.”
Excerpt from Mice 1961
Stacey Levine
“Sherrie Gagel pushed through the throng toward the head branch librarian, declaring with a patchy pant: ‘May I ask you something Miss Stroke? I’ve wanted to for ages.’”
In this movie
David C. Hall
“In this movie God is made of aluminum foil,
computer screens and old cell phones,
beer cans and dead batteries
with eyes of Christmas tree lights”
The Cathedral of Desire
Nina Schuyler
“Before she taped closed the box of Floor Polish Shine, she slid in her note, I miss watermelon. And with the bottle of Mold Killer, I miss pink tulips.
The notes didn’t harm anyone. Little scraps of paper, a message that there was more to the Cathedral of Desire than what met the eye.”
Let There Exist For Us…
Eva-Maria Sher
“Let there exist for us
not one further sorrow
Come to me once again
clear-sounding myth weaver”
In This Case, He Killed an Innocent Person
Carla Bessa
Translated by Elton Uliana
A renowned businessman was arrested unexpectedly early this Friday, after an accident in which he ran over and killed a workman in the South Zone of Rio. According to the chief of police, the driver will be charged with manslaughter (where there is no intention of killing) and drunk driving.
That I Would
Cameron Morse
That I would remember moving in here
time would bear witness
I am still here, have weathered
and written seasons out-
A Chinese Temple in California
Alvin Lu
Did the workmen who received the pieces carried by cart and mule know what they were doing? There would be, and still are, strict rules for feng shui. Did the delivery come with instructions? Or did the builders just go by their infallible memories?