37.1 Summer/Fall 2024


Double Abecedarian for What Hollywood Taught Me About Sex

Dorothy Chan

I thought I was undesirable. Unlovable, sounding / Just like a Bachelor lead, with way less privilege, not / Kissing generically gorgeous ladies in Forever 21 gowns.


Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction

Carolyn Hembree Some Measures

Marshall Woodward

Carolyn Hembree’s For Today is a triumph of Mississippi Delta poetry.

Double Abecedarian for What Hollywood Taught Me About Sex

Dorothy Chan

I thought I was undesirable. Unlovable, sounding / Just like a Bachelor lead, with way less privilege, not / Kissing generically gorgeous ladies in Forever 21 gowns.

Oncology

Ali Shapiro

After death the heart sometimes keeps beating / a little. Or after it’s removed / from the body.

TAKING A FLIGHT WITH A HANDSOME STRANGER

Jackie Sabbagh

Who you are, what made me assent—all I know’s I was hopeful and bored / reposing in the Delta Sky Club

LITERARY FICTION AND THE BAD GIRL

Jackie Sabbagh

I was shimmying on stage, apoplectic in the harsh blue neons, when I remembered I have loved you my whole life.

Tarantula

Dion O'Reilly

It’s not the first time / someone did wrong, and you / smelled your blame

My Daughter is in the Driveway Crushing the Peony Blossoms

Sarah Carson

Meanwhile, my sister and I / rate our father’s revenge stories by punchline.

Fox

Zhang Weidong (transl. by Liang Yujing)

Foxes keep showing up. Their voice contains a baby crying at night.

Tamara Miller Interviews Nancy Miller Gomez About “Inconsolable Objects.”

Tamara Miller

Well, a lot happens in our lives every day. We experience so many things and most of what we experience—most of what we see and feel and smell and touch and taste—we forget. Because there's just too much information to take in. But the things that lodge in our minds and that come back to us as memories or that we hold on to, I think there's a reason. And that's because it's a poem waiting to happen.

The Emotions of Money, The Seduction of Class

Michael Colbert

As an undergraduate at NYU, Daniel Lefferts found mythical beings: students at the Stern School of Business. They eschewed the de rigueur American Apparel hoodies and skinny jeans in favor of Patagonia vests, khakis.

WALKING FROM EAST TO WEST JERUSALEM

Edward Salem

My Jewish wife and I / went into the Old City / through Damascus Gate / to eat sweet orange squares of knafeh.

Good Honey

Gabriella Graceffo

Her body and mine are the same shape. By reason, this means mine can be touched. I still can’t stomach it.

Scratch-Scab, Scratch-Scab

Leanna Petronella

For months, small gold crowns have fallen from the sky.

A FIRST AND LAST POEM

Edward Salem

My mother wrote a poem on her deathbed / after five bleak months of leukemia. / Something in Arabic to the effect of, Why me?

Triple Sonnet: In 1950, My Father Was Born in Guangzhou

Dorothy Chan

“Define Situationship” should really / be a Jeopardy! question

PILLAR OF WHATNOT

Edward Salem

Isabella Rosselini said she loved her father’s big belly / because it reminded her of how he used to sit in bed / all day writing

Still Life

Sara Elkamel

When the water recedes, a flock of / small stones appears along the shore

Waiting for a Visitation

Lance Larsen

Some call this cloud work, some call / this clever crows riding the updrafts.

WELCOME TO THE SPLATTER ZONE A Review of SLIME LINE, by Jake Maynard

Jonah Walters

I’ve never worked at a fish processing plant, but I’ve met a few people who have.

An Interview with Lilly Dancyger

Rosa Boshier González

Memoirist, editor extraordinaire, and dedicated literary citizen, it’s hard to miss Lilly Dancyger either out in the world or across the internet’s literary platforms


From the Archives

An Interview with Lilly Dancyger

Rosa Boshier González

Memoirist, editor extraordinaire, and dedicated literary citizen, it’s hard to miss Lilly Dancyger either out in the world or across the internet’s literary platforms

Americanizing Lengua

Moisés R. Delgado

On 9/11, with the radio transcribing the ongoing events and his white coworkers in the plant nursery going mad as though the place was burning down, all my dad could do was laugh. As far as he knew, the Omaha nursery was fine. The roof was still above their heads. The ground was unmoving. The sky still blue, and most importantly there was work to be done.

3 Poems

Eleni Sikelianos

in a place where one grass blade makes / the next grass blade’s shade / that grass blade made / the next grass blade’s root

2 Poems

Samyak Shertok

Do we all migrare: pass into a new condition? / Are we all natives—nativus: born in bondage— / walking toward no-border?