“We were arguing,” she said. Her eyes felt wide. Her palms were drenched in sweat.
“What?” Her boyfriend grabbed her elbow. He felt like fire. She pulled away. And he looked pale to her. Pale as bones. She smelled smoke. “When?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” The incense singed her nose. Everything was aflame. “Wedding invitations?”
Featured Content
Coral Bracelets by Umiyuri Katsuyama
And You Yourself Calliope:
A Conversation with Rosie Stockton
Permanent Volta (Nightboat, 2021), Rosie Stockton’s astounding debut, takes on the sonnet and the sestina, subjection and subjectivity, Sappho plus Marx, then Virgil and why not Lacan. We spoke about the book via Zoom in August 2021. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. David Brazil: Permanent Volta doesn’t have a lot of […]
Being the Murdered Nanny
by Cathy Ulrich
The thing about being the murdered nanny is you set the plot in motion. You had your own room there, and a bed with a pink cover, little purple flowers speckling it. You had a glitter-cover journal that you kept tucked under your pillow. They’ll find it when you’re gone — they’ll say gone, tell […]
Welcome to World War Me
by Patrick Meeds
“We will / be setting all rivers on fire. You need to learn / to say goodbye in as many different languages / as possible.”
Off the Circuit by Sara Saadlou
Translated From Persian by Siavash Saadlou
I’ve lived three times, and I don’t prefer any of my lives over the other. Life has always been in progress in the circuit around which I’ve been traveling. The circuit doesn’t care if I’ve been on the right road. It doesn’t matter if I’m on the path of happiness or to misery. Being strong […]
Offerings to the Altar of St. Joseph
by J.E. Garrard
After the storm returned: We sat barefoot on the back porch, The water whipping itself into a frenzy, Us in our plastic red chairs. The oak tree leaned down to us, like God observing ants in a flood, Its shadow falling over your face, Making roots of your feet and branches of your hands. And […]
Fragmentary Pleasures
by Yasmine Eve Lucas
Phil recommended I visit the Glyptothek as we sat together on a bench in Munich’s Eastern Cemetery. “This has nothing to do with what we will be talking about,” he said, “but they have ancient sculptures with missing arms and legs. They are hundreds of years old and have been destroyed.” I visited the museum […]
Two Poems by Leanne Ellul
Translated from Maltese by Albert Gatt
On again Again. Take me out of my depth. These legs below me flailing, flailing. Again take me to where I dive and make for pebbles that I take for rock. Amid me algae crushing through. It’s warm today. I take a breath of sky you listen your face turned to the light. Shadow […]
A Conversation with Quan Barry
by Nathan Winer
“There’s a… freedom allowed you in poetry. And I trust that, even if I can’t explain it. It bleeds into my fiction, in many ways.”
Spiral
by Ron Mohring
“He kicked free. Climbed out, coughing. Told no one. And took the lesson
into himself like a rusty nail to the foot: secret wound, slow poison.”
