“Weird fantastic beings of a/Super-intelligence. Ruling a race of syntheic humans/and pitting them against mankind’s dream.” (poetry)
“You did not talk politics, except/to tell me we were being watched” (poetry)
“What’s wrong with circles? What shape is your wedding ring?” (drama)
“Faris’s book warns Republicans of their party’s coming apocalypse, but I think the Democratic Party should take note too,” writes Nick Rueth. (reviews)
“While the rest of the department read books, wrote papers, and graded student work, Tim and Rick printed out pictures of clowns.” (nonfiction)
“my mouth is full of blood, like a poppy growing in my mouth, it tastes like…the pennies I used to throw in wishing wells,” Content Warning: Sexual Assault (fiction)
I’ve chosen to work with concrete to speak about the impulse to create permanent structures, but also to speak about impermanence, change, and loss, Ledelle Moe tells Helena Feder.
“Geter’s lines don’t so much hum as slice, visually cutting into the page like claws digging for answers in a ground that will not give,” writes reviewer Phillip B. Williams.
“Her mother continued to hand her things: that lost dollar, a Chinese cookie fortune, one missing pearl earring.” (fiction)
“in soft squares, you try to neglect/your worries and shut down/the war-voices,” (Poetry)
There is no such thing as old water, but when I answered, “I’m as old as water,” my son’s eyes grew wide. He says that because water cycles, it’s all super old. (fiction)
O, America, a horse like us would have been glue by now. (nonfiction)
When I saw James, the two of us falling into each other’s arms and hugging tightly before separating again, when I introduced him to Kevin and they shook hands, the crush was over.
“People are not who they once were but actors in the great drama of life, informed by what they have seen on the screen,” writes Peter Valente. (Review)
“it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.”
“California has weathered him with sun and heat. Michigan has begun to change me, too. We’re two birds…both singing variations of the same song.” (Fiction)
“left them in the earth to grow their roots and they reached all over…not allowed the roles except/maids and gardeners and gangsters and prisoners”
“Each day the quick kick of the dream/empties another body/ and the ghosts move through unkempt streets/named Lincoln and Delaware,” (Poetry)
“from their beacon hands/glow worldwide welcomes and a thousand smiles.” (Poetry)
“at recess the innocent school/children play and gambol in/pure non-denominational play”
“The rose bushes lining the sidewalk leading to the front steps appeared like sentinels at the Mughal court, waiting for a decry from the Indian parent at the parapet.” (Fiction)
“How and where women and minority groups get the shaft is only half of the lesson this book imparts;” writes Bean Gilsdorf. (Review)
“I dreamed the sun, very low,/painting me a mustache of sweat and coal.”
“I see that the innocent face/beneath the long-brimmed, straw hat/does not seem to know it is raining.” (Poetry)
“I wondered aloud/if on those odds days/where I felt like a hunted squid/that what I was actually feeling/was Light Cerulean Blue” (Poetry)
“‘I can ring you up for/what fits in the bag. The rest is your responsibility.'” (Poetry)
All the other cool calm quite sensible terms had stable gigs in respectable stories. (Poetry)
“20th century monk/High Priest of Art/The Legendary Master—/in his bare immaculate altar of a studio/in the heart of New York City” (Poetry)
“I know what it’s like to be had, to be misused and unused.” (Drama)
Humanizing the effects of Chicago gun violence, editor Chris Green chose a form for his latest anthology that mirrors the way a semi-automatic weapon fires. Interviewed by Donald G. Evans.
I look to the nearby hill, past her and the highway, and watch it blacken. Its lines are clean and honest. (Fiction)
“ParaGard: [thank you student health/insurance] a type of long-acting,/reversible, contraceptive, inrauterine/device.” (Poetry)
“Ghosts stories/told around the campfire/predicted my future.” (Poetry)
Perhaps they found another way. Perhaps they could stop. Perhaps they just go to church. What I wouldn’t give to possess their simple freedoms. (Nonfiction)
Our government only practices against a sunset bleeding into the cradle of tactile landing. (Poetry)
“merely archaeological, the images of strewn masks take on a symbolic meaning for America’s ambivalence towards public health.” (The Loop)
“the city’s landmarks/are illuminated/by your stopover in my thoughts” (TCTC Translations)
“I pledge allegiance to no man,/ let alone some fucking flag” (Poetry)
We’re whiter and more rural which means we don’t pick the president—we just narrow the view. (Poetry)
CONTENT WARNING: This play contains discussion about suicide.
Can’t lie to anyone here. Prophets—all of us. Could baptize any guy with your spit. (Drama)
“Eyes reflect the distortions/of a whitewashed mind.” (Poetry)
“The footbridge is missing a plank./He has frayed the regard of everybody he knows.” (Poetry)
“Haranguing shots, agony, careening/blue lights stir fever in a dark bedroom.” (Poetry)
Many are drawn to martins covered with feathers that seem to absorb ash, stained with orange glass shards. (Translations)
You spend the winter telling me it’s almost summer. (Nonfiction)
CONTENT WARNING: This short story contains discussion about suicidal events and ideation. (Fiction)
If countries were people, we wouldn’t invite them to our parties because they are too monstrous, Robin Hemley tells Julia Lieblich.
“Apparently to be a poet—dogmatic on the outside/and lacking conviction within//is a hell one can leave/but doesn’t” (Translations)
Donald Ray Pollock’s Hillbilly Gothic peels back the sanitized “heartland” image of the Midwest, revealing the often-overlooked rural people. An interview by Jarrett Kaufman.
