ISSUE 07
Steve Evans. Oteeyho Iro. Charles Haddox. Zama Madinana. Taylor Graham. Natalie Harris-Spencer. Jason Lobell. Maggie Yang. Aaron Weinzapfel. Meredith Wadley. Asma Al-Masyabi. Linda Neal. Shilo Niziolek. David A. Porter.
03
READ • WATCH • LISTEN
Chaun Ballard wants to write about flowers. Emma Wynn takes us riding in Iceland, the unrising sun shadowing the sky. Joan Kwon Glass wonders, Who decides what is sacred? Sonia Greenfield collects apologies blown around like snow. Mercury-Marvin Sunderland drinks like a mosquito and screams like a cicada. Trent Busch shares lies with no meanness, while Clifford Thompson ushers us into his brother's apartment, where a gag clock's hands run backwards. Jane Zwart warns us not to mistake our infant woes for sorrow's infantries. Canaan Morse consults his cast iron pan in a green linoleum kitchen before all success.
Kyle Rea lets us peek into a friendship enveloped in the silence of everything and nothing: bloody heels, ticking off the days and finding your fifth grade English teacher on Grindr. Angie Kang should've seen it coming. Holly Day wants to whisper to the bats before setting them free — and Nicole Lynn Cohen urges her to talk to someone. Jared Green removes the safety cover and shows us the live parts. Veronika Kot cannot see a train leave without a trace of mourning that it leaves without her.
POETRY
JANE
ZWART
“The Ranks of Sorrow”
and other poems
"Enough is one of those words, a bead / on an abacus, that time slides back / and forth..."
CHAUN
BALLARD
“I Want to Write about Flowers”
and other poems
"Wildflower you made it, / he shouted over the crowds / in times square"
EMMA
WYNN
“Ebb Tide”
and other poems
“Carve it here — / everything that rises we harpoon.”
MERCURY-MARVIN
SUNDERLAND
“Can of Pineapple Rings”
and other poems
“When you eat / raw pineapple / the acids inside / eat away at the meat”
TRENT
BUSCH
“The Cleaning Rod”
and other poems
“If my parents died I'd come / and live with her I said, / all the while eyeing the candy”
JOAN
KWON GLASS
“Dear Ghosts of Jeju Uprising, 1948”
and other poems
“...in our still-divided country, wailing, roaring NO in every language.”
CLIFFORD
THOMPSON
“My Other Grandparents”
and other poems
“More mysterious than the thing itself / is why I remember it."
SONIA
GREENFIELD
“There's No GIF for It in My iPhone”
and other poems
“...I think, too, of all those / apologies we blow around like snow"
CANAAN
MORSE
“Family Farm"
and other poems
“...so much becomes the crashing down, but family farm / does so with an accent..."
FICTION
ANGIE
KANG
"Still Life"
“After the fact, the supervisor let me go home early, and we both knew it was just a courtesy...”
KYLE
REA
"Collections"
“The foot shavings have been sitting in the Pyrex bowl I stole from my mom for three years now.”
HOLLY
DAY
"I. Bat Mass..."
“Bishop Hugh of Lincoln once bit off a piece of the bone of Mary Magdalene while venerating it.”
VERONIKA
KOT
"A Thousand Years"
“I cannot see a train leave without a trace of mourning that it leaves without me.”
NICOLE LYNN
COHEN
"You should talk to someone."
“You can get down into the juice and seeds of those small red clusters."
JARED
GREEN
"Fulfillment"
“Behind him I could see a bright yellow robotic lift cruising the fulfillment floor, fulfilling.”
WATCH
THE SUBNIVEAN
AWARDS
What do Lemony Snicket (AKA Daniel Handler), April Sinclair (whose book, Coffee Will Make You Black, will soon be a major motion picture) and luminary poet Arisa White have in common?
Subnivean. Catch these heavyweight authors in conversation, and then prepare to get read to like a baby at bedtime by the Subnivean Awards finalists: poets Chaun Ballard, Joan Kwon Glass, Canaan Morse and Emma Wynn; fiction writers Nicole Lynn Cohen, Jared Green, Angie Kang and Kyle Rea.
"I would recommend, like, a bottle of Jim Beam ... before Googling yourself."
— Daniel Handler