Latest Writing
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QUEER NATURE ROUNDTABLE
In 2021, Four Way Review partnered with several other journals and presses to establish the Bootleg Reading Series. It was a partnership we hoped would continue to grow beyond the reading series and lift up the projects of each partner. We’re excited to share this conversation with some of the poets of the new Queer…
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INTERVIEW WITH Raegen Pietrucha
FWR: To start, I was hoping you might speak about the pull of Greek mythology, both in its use as a framing device for some of the poems and a source of imagery in others. RP: When I drafted my first poem about Medusa way back in 2007, it was about a different subject entirely.…
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INTERVIEW WITH Matthew Olzmann
Matthew Olzmann’s latest collection, Constellation Route, is out now from Alice James. He has published two previous collections, Contradictions in the Design and Mezzanines, and he has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Kresge Arts Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. FWR: Can you speak on the genesis and organization of Constellation Route? MO:…
POETRY
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BLUE PERIOD by James O’Leary
It’s 9:31 PM where the end of the city tinges the sea. An empty spiderweb hangs motionless between the blinds & the closed window leaking the street’s neon onto the unmade bed. No moon. Not even the comfort of wine, bottles shaped like the body I want, & will never have.…
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THE YEAR YOU DIED by Vasvi Kejriwal
05/19: A tornado flung a fridge into the bones of a tree. Its bark, gnarled, like the mouth of someone, new to grief. 05/22: I found your pen at the edge of the dresser. Yet to collect dust, it held your fading fingermarks. 06/18: Then, hunger…
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TWO POEMS by Caroline Richards
Recovery poem with jargon After reading Auden, I water my moth orchid with ice cubes and watch a girl with green hair draw a benzene ring in white erase. I pay attention to time. I arrange my table of books into heiroglyphs and try to say something before the sun sets. In Midsummer Night’s…
FICTION
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SILVER LINE by Christian Kiefer
I had been afraid of the cold silent body I held to my belly but when we at last reached the engine and clambered up the frozen metal ladder and into the relative warmth of the interior, the child jerked awake and began to wail, a thin, gasping sound that bit directly into my heart.…
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LITTLE LEGS by C.H. Hooks
If the TV is on, it’s morning. I might have never noticed if I didn’t think it had spoken my name. Good god good morning. It did not speak my name. No one did. I hear rustling in the bathroom and there is light coming from under the door. Warm yellow light that tints the…
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DUCK, DUCK, HORSE by Jeff Frawley
The lumber, I tell Patricia, will soon be a fence. I’ve hired a crew. We’re at the window. She’s pinching the mole on my neck. She asks, But Katrin, what about the cost? The fence will consume what remains of my settlement money, that sum secured by lawyers after I fled from the Fix. But…
TRANSLATION
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THREE POEMS by Álvaro Fausto Taruma trans. Grant Schutzman
CEMETERY OF THE DROWNED To my shipwrecked brothers on the island of Inhaca As your hymn hangs above the mouth of the castaway I call out your name, I call you with this tongue whose words are more than just a soft murmur, a sob, a liquid wound, a widow’s voice, an estranged orphanhood beyond…
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THROUGH THE LAKE, THROUGH THE WATER by Johannes Anyuru trans. Brad Harmon
THROUGH THE LAKE, THROUGH THE WATER The beeches stand there, imposing, untouched,steeped in time: I wanderthrough the tall yellow hall of leavesand listen to the openchords: October, whoever cries herecries inwards,the wood bridge has sucked the salve dry.The underworldly bamboo flutes resound through the lake, through the water, the wind islead poured into stone molds.…
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THREE POEMS by Sandra Moussempès trans. Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy
NON-IDENTIFIED FEMININE OBJECTS Cinematic princesses escaping from an Eastward facing convent have long known the limits of where they can go Fatigued from hours of forest walking, they have taken refuge in a haunted house, abandoned since 1972, they now know that at any moment the story could stop The film could disintegrate, and they…
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