Brian CliftonOFFICE SUPPLIES In the back, a Formica table waits on off-white industrial tile. We clock- out, pull paperclips from our throats: purple ones, yellow ones, metallic, pink. Our mouths never seem satisfied. We cough them up enough in jagged…
Robert PulwerTHE CONVERSATION “Are you an anti-Semite?” I looked up from my mother’s crumbling copy of Journey to the End of the Night, which I had pilfered during my last visit home. I was so shocked to hear that someone…
Shannon SweetnamMACARONS We were in the Clotted Cow when we got the call. “I found four thermometers, but they’re all rectal,” Dad shouted over the phone. “Rectal?” I asked, as I licked buttercream frosting off my fingers. “What do you…
Chila WoychikWHAT THE CLOUDS BRING Five years ago, the eastern part of this state was submerged—a Midwestern Katrina. Waters from a snowy winter mixed with an especially rainy spring and ran down our rivers, the Mississippi, the Iowa, the Cedar,…
Anthony CuneoTHIRTEEN MUSINGS AROUND MY CREATIVE PROCESS [slideshow_deploy id=’12332′] I I’m a big fan of uncertainty. I wish to God that the Nazis had been less certain that Jews were vermin. Not knowing you’re doing it right is a good…
Alicia L. GleasonDEADBOLT I always end up back at the apartment on 12th street. We moved in on a dim Saturday morning. Remember how you found that kinked key in the cabinet beneath the sink? A key someone before us…
Tony TracyFEIGN & CUT Indian summer a shroud of humidity that hangs in the form of crystalline vapor over the striped field. Flaming sun falling backside, burning from a ridge of distant pine. Its ruby trajectory caught in a canvas…
Emily Steinberg: Introduction by Tahneer OksmanBROKEN EGGS: A Visual Narrative To read Emily Steinberg’s autobiographical visual narrative, Broken Eggs, a set of sixty-seven images accompanied by sprawling text and recounting her struggles with infertility, is to witness a series of concurrent, sometimes…
You are so far south I keep
looking down at my thumb.
Written on the wrinkled skin
just below the joint
the neon blue veins fan out
flashing the name Utopia.
...read more
Caleb MurrayMETEMPSYCHOSIS John Henry made circles with his bare feet on the carpet. The overhead light was on a fader, which was set low and gave the room an almost hazy affect. Against one wall was a purple couch, its…
Luke StrombergWHEN I SLEEP, I DREAM OF TSUNAMIS I’m walking down Main Street when a blue and strangely beautiful tidal wave rises in the distance, reaching high over roof tops. It’s the sound of wind, of water gathering force that…
Kelly Ann JacobsonRAVEN IN THE GRASS A single blade of grass. Long and thin, streaked like the drag of paint left behind by a brush. A singular shade of green, like the color of nothing except itself. Among others it…
J. Scott BugherTHE BANK LET MY DAD GO I’m alone in a projector booth, dressed in denim and sweat, prying open tin canisters, reels of nitrate film. Tonight’s a double feature, and I’ve been left holding the bag again. Two…
Alli KatzCATS “If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.” —Mark Twain [slideshow_deploy id=’12378′] Mark Twain never met my cat. Five…
Glen ArmstrongTHE LEMON POEM He said “lemon” over and over. Lemon. Lemon. Lemon. Until the word was just a can of creamed lemon. The radio played a marathon of lemon songs. All over the city a million plastic boxes sang…
Kevin ToscaTHE INGREDIENTS OF DOG FOOD Each night my father dipped two fingers into meat and sauce and then passed that wet present down to Django’s drooling mouth. It was no secret. I saw. My mother saw. My father wasn’t…
Merilyn JacksonOYSTERS I am licking the insides of the oyster shells embedded in salt on a plate black as your angry eyes like your love, cooling rapidly as lava. Forgive me. It reminds me of how much I want to…
Jan-Erik AsplundEMILY Desire not the night, for that is when people will be destroyed. Or perhaps: to drag people away from their homes. Or maybe: when people vanish in their place. (Job 36:20), variations The speed was a natural solution…
Karla CorderoMIKEY COMES HOME When I was eight my father told me Mikey our pet turtle ran away from home. I dusted the aquarium for fingerprints. Made reward posters out of construction paper and outlined Mikey’s smile with jungle green…
Dan EncarnacionLENITIVE MAN: from “Hominids” (1) ..the quality or condition of being tortuous;….twistedness, ..crookedness, sinuosity; an instance of this — (2)…figuratively mental … .. .. … … or moral crookedness — (3)..an instance of this; or something……………. ……………that exemplifies it, a twisted…
Marc LabriolaCUTMAN If the needle swung from side to side, it would be a girl. If the needle swung in circles, a boy. Lailah’s three sisters lay her laughing in Ben’s arms as her mother dangled the needle above her…
Melanie SevcenkoAN OPEN LETTER TO THE LADY WHO ALWAYS REQUESTS TWO NAPKINS AT MY RESTAURANT Dear Miss or Mrs., First off, although my hostess shift covers only the lunch crowd on a Monday through Friday basis, I am well aware…
Julie KearneySUNDAY IN VENICE The alleyway was paved with humped dark stones like so many dead or hibernating turtles. On either side of these stones, walls leprous with peeling plaster inclined inwards towards a sliver of grey sky. The man…
CircusMAGIC TRICK He presses the deck of cards into her hands and says: Shuffle. As you shuffle, think about all the cards in the deck. Concentrate on a single card, but don’t choose one, just hand the deck back to…
Peter BeckMAINE FARM Maine I. Four Season Farm, June. When I first started farming I thought I’d eat well, but the truth is no one eats worse than a young farmer. After a full day of pulling weeds, the last…
Beth SeetchMISS TORRES WOKE US EARLY Just before a) Death We sleep upside-down, toes at bed’s head, pajama seams chafing our buttons tender unless we remember to turn them inside-out and put cold spoons under our pillows. Walking slow in…
Deborah PurdyLAB CHILD THEOREM Automatic habit like a rifle, pistol or pilot, the beach doll hermit told him to hold the bracelet, the bracelet told him to blame the rich hotel, the cloth heir, the rambling hot chili. He touched…
Darren C. DemareeTWO POEMS I. EMILY AS A GRAND ASSUMPTION Tide & fog, the shore lines up like an army, slow to defeat, powerful with neat tongues tucked in to avoid the swallow of salt. It’s not a defense when…
João CerqueiraMAGDALENE’S DREAM That night Magdalene dreamt about Jesus. She was wearing a green overall and gloves, her hair was protected by a plastic cap, and a mask covered her mouth. She was in a large laboratory, looking through the…
Nancy AgatiNOTICING WATER: Public Art As you travel along the river—any river, stream, creek or body of water—what do you notice? Do you see the changing currents, the light that bounces and travels from wave to wave? Do you feel…
“Space and Time” was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2015 Amelia FowlerSPACE AND TIME 1. Since very early childhood, I have had a recurring dream of a white room so bright it is dimensionless, boundaries of…
Andrea RothmanLITTLE FEATHERS The bird lay shivering on the lawn, their faces reflected dark and alien in his button eye. The other eye, the one on the left side of his head, was shut, or possibly gone. A clot of…
Thomas DevaneyPHOTOBOOTH Black-and-white film is instant toner for Americans and their famous tans, our fantasy faces, free of talent and a free shot. What summer looks like when the sound is on: bronzed, burnt, black, and red. Just look at…
Steven Anthony GeorgeLE PAIN D’AFFLICTION The piercing, relentless buzz rises and falls in pitch. It starts and stops for only a moment, before resuming again near the upper corner. I have been cared for in this same room for nineteen…
Stephen PerloffTHE TIMES, THEY WERE A-CHANGIN’ – West Philly Days: A Photo Essay [slideshow_deploy id=’12401′] When I arrived at the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman in 1966, men were required to wear jackets and neckties to dinner—and most of…
Carly EathorneMAKING EGGS A thousand ways to make an egg, and I’m attempting one: over-easy. But there past the blotches on my kitchen window gleams the hourglass on the belly of the black widow – she, too, is making eggs.…
Madeline ZehnderTHE TASTE OF OTHERS She walks gingerly toward the man chopping onions, who turns but does not shake her hand. Later she will learn this was politeness; right now she thinks he is rude. He criticizes the oil she…
Amber Officer-NarvasaBORDERLAND The rainwater dripped lasciviously—as rainwater in New York will do—through the sidewalk gratings and down through the mottled, cracked, brown-stained ceilings of the Grand Street subway station. He was standing near the MetroCard machines, begging. Good writers, so…
Sue GranzellaBEAUTIFUL UGLY The temperature outside was 107, but it was hotter where I was that day in 1989, bouncing around with three friends in a dilapidated bus bound for Chihuahua, Mexico. Air-conditioning on this journey was simple: wrench the…
Tammy DelatorreLIVING ARRANGEMENTS I. Landlord & Tenant Fresh out of college, I rented a tiny two-bedroom in the slums of San Jose. It was a cold, lonely house. In the winters, to get warm, I had to turn on both…
Michael HeadSMALL He stood staring out the peephole and waiting for the girl who said she’d come. She was three days late and he didn’t have a television so he mostly stood staring out the peephole and counting the seconds.…
Sean JacksonHOW A GHOST IS MADE This is the part that gets to Shelly every time: running past the Horner’s fence with a big, bright smile on her face. It can’t be the sour pucker that she wants to display.…
CELEBRATED SUMMER
by Charles Forsman
Fantagraphics Books, 67 pages
reviewed by Stephanie Trott
For the first potion of one’s life, summer is a welcome three-month respite from the seemingly stressful remainder of the year. Like the buds of a flower, it is a period of joy in the face of few commitments and responsibilities. But somewhere, as those flowers begin to fade and adolescence sets in, we become forlornly reminiscent of those times as we’re caught in-between one concrete stage of life and another. Charles Forsman’s Celebrated Summer tells of one such swan song, recalling the alternating experiences of two teens as they trip both literally and figuratively in the midst of one teenage summer.
Told through the perspective of Wolf, whose gentle nature is masked by his large frame and sprout-like mohawk, we join a transient trip from the suburbs to the shore. Wolf’s partner in crime, Mike, is a sassy-mouthed whisp of a teenage boy who initiates both trips, leading Wolf down the rabbit hole with two tabs of LSD and on an unnecessarily elongated drive. Mike is clearly the alpha-male in this friendship, though Wolf—who describes himself as “a pretty nervous guy on the inside”—does not seem to object. Rather, he willingly goes along with Mike’s dominant nature as a directionless passenger of his own fortune.
Poetry by Jen Karetnick, reviewed by Amanda Hickok PRAYER OF CONFESSION (Finishing Line Press) Jen Karetnick’s Prayer of Confession pulls the reader into an intimate, enclosed space—often either a private, domestic space or a suspended moment—that is alternately comforting and…
BALTHUS: A BIOGRAPHY
by Nicholas Fox Weber
Dalkey Archive Press, 656 pages
reviewed by Gabriel Chazan
When looking at the paintings of Balthus, the viewer can’t help but react. Seeing paintings of young and often pre-pubescent girls and women in poses loaded with a strange sexuality, there is no possibility of cool remove. The viewer is made to consider actively their role in looking at the young women in these sometimes cruel, always compelling, provocative and often beautiful images. Balthus’s images have a strange, almost dreamlike hold, as they look back at us, impenetrable and confrontational. Balthus himself is somewhere in them yet distant. He wished his life to be separate from his work, something to be never included in exhibits or official publications, only “a misleading and harmful screen placed between the viewer and painter…paintings do not describe or reveal a painter.” He almost entirely obscured the true facts of his life, recreating himself as a count and rendering himself a challengingly elusive subject for biography. He placed the most responsibility on those looking at his work to react to whatever sexuality or darkness they might find in the work as their own perception.
Poetry by Ernest Hilbert, reviewed by J.G. McClure ALL OF YOU ON THE GOOD EARTH (Red Hen Press) In her classic “Some Notes on Organic Form,” Denise Levertov argues that “Rhyme, chime, echo, reiteration…not only serve to knit the elements…
A Graphic Narrative with text by Mariko Tamaki, illustrations by Jillian Tamaki, reviewed by Natalie Pendergast THIS ONE SUMMER (First Second Books) Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s 2014 graphic novel This One Summer follows the lives of two summer cottage friends…
BILATERAL ASYMMETRY
by Don Riggs
Texture Press, 120 pages
reviewed by Shinelle L. Espaillat
In his new collection, Bilateral Asymmetry, Don Riggs explores the balance—or the imbalance—between art and life, and the inevitable synergy between the two. His illustrations illuminate his poetic concepts, offering the reader a fuller texture through which to experience his work. In the manner of the old masters, Riggs offers provocation with deceptive simplicity.
The first section, Gallery Opening, is an exercise in ekphrasis. Riggs entwines visual and literary art, reminding us how genres and mediums can and should inspire each other. Indeed, the opening poem, “Still Life,” creates a robust picture in the style of Vermeer, of the tortured artist struggling with the space between inspiration and craft. “Pagan Mystery in the Renaissance” further exposes the shifting boundaries between words and worlds, exploring Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses and how misinterpretation led to a masterpiece that inspires fantasy. Readers needn’t be familiar with the works in question in order to see them in Riggs’ imagery, and to understand the works’ impact on both the writer and the world, though the poems make you want to physically experience the artistic works.
Nonfiction by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Dan Bartlett, reviewed by Ana Schwartz MY STRUGGLE: BOOK THREE: BOYHOOD (Steerforth Press) Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow If all one reads is Proust, it might be easy to…
Poetry by Michael Earl Craig, reviewed by Anthony Blake TALKATIVENESS (Wave Books) In a recent column of The New York Times, leading poets were once again asked whether their genre could ever regain its relevancy. William Logan’s contribution “As for…