Latest Writing
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INTERVIEW WITH Clifford Thompson
Clifford Thompson is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction in 2013 for Love for Sale and Other Essays, published by Autumn House Press. He has also published a memoir (Twin of Blackness), a novel (Signifying Nothing) and a nonfiction book (What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues). Thompson’s…
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Ghinwa Jawhari on her debut chapbook: BINT Interviewed by Sara Elkamel
Ghinwa Jawhari named her debut chapbook, selected by poet Aria Aber for publication by Radix Media, BINT, Arabic for girl. In Arab cultures, the word is also used to describe a virgin woman, of any age. In this series of poems, compact in form yet unbridled in lyricism, Jawhari explores the passage (particularly of those…
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CONVERSATION WITH Adrian Matejka and Conor Bracken
Adrian, thanks for agreeing to talk about your latest book, Somebody Else Sold the World, with me. I’m really excited to talk about it, and the ways that it is contiguous with your larger poetic project, and how it also subverts or cuts new facets into it. One of the things that has always exhilarated me…
POETRY
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PASSTHROUGH by Haley Lee
After the play we talk while we wait for the C with our shoes touching on the platform. Say, when the magician unrolled the sea, an old tunnel in us burst open. Lights off, all air – with you I believe in water wrung from paper. They didn’t need to use names to make us…
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GOLD by Kunjana Parashar
Lately, I’ve been yearning for things: car keys, houseplants, dhurries, cubes of ice, petals, but really for something skin-deep. I keep addressing myself as we; like I am the bull & I am the matador. I am the prayer and the devotee. We are prying open our mouths to sing. We are the ear and…
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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.…
FICTION
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HEARTWOOD by Rose Skelton
On the day after Hazel died – it was a Tuesday afternoon in early March – George stood at his woodworking bench, whittling a bowl. He pressed the piece of yew down, and used a bowl gouge to scoop a smooth sliver of the pinkish-white wood so that it curled upwards and away, falling…
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COLLAPSED by Michael Holladay
When I was at Andy’s house he looked at me and said, “I want to stone that place to the ground.” We were getting high on the basement couch, and he was behind a thin mist of smoke. He was talking about the tobacco warehouse his dad inherited, now dilapidated. Or, his dad called it…
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TOO BEAUTIFUL TO BE BELIEVED by April Vazquez
“Teo, Teo, Teo,” Álvaro sings into the phone. “You’re not going to believe what I did today. Even after I tell you you’re still not going to believe it.” His voice is all keyed up, like he’s calling to tell me it’s my turn to collect on la tanda. Chingao, I think. Now what? “You…
TRANSLATION
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TWO POEMS by Ashraf Zaghal trans. Ghada Mourad (from ARABIC)
Halloween Scene 1Scarves flyAs if a tribe of ghosts carry them to the skyThey fly and land with sin on my neighbor’s headMy neighbor knows neither their namesNor hers Scene 2Scarves run toward the angelsThe angels are unusually blackIt’s said to be a costume partyIt’s said to be a cheerful consolationOf the deceased who is…
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WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE WRITING POEMS by Oh Kyu-won trans. Jack Jung (from KOREAN)
Sleep does not come for many nights. Today I waited for my unclosing eyes againand sleep fell asleep first and sleep’s clothes and shoesand door talisman went to sleep tooI alone lowered my gaze and watched sleepwho was sleeping without me. Exhausted sleep collapsed beside me and curled its bodyand snored ever so lightly.Where is my…
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FROM NORTH by Baek Seok trans. Jack Jung (from KOREAN)
Once upon a time I left behindThe tribes of Buyeo and Suksin and Balhae and Yeojin and Yo and GeumAnd Heungahnryeong and Eumsan and Amoowooreu and SoonggariI betrayed the tiger the deer and the raccoonAnd lied to the trout the catfish and the frog I left them behind At the timeremember how the birch and the…
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