WINNER: A Trip to the City
The woman was singing a wailing song in the basement of my friend’s rowhouse apartment in Bed-Stuy, pulling me out of reverie at this musty house show.
Issue 59: Fall 2022
Introduction
On Inheritance: Hospitality or Decolonial Eating
What we might inherit is not always known in advance of the inheritance. When the inheritance is outside of the material or the tangible, sometimes noticing it is difficult.
Fiction Prize
RUNNER UP: Like Triumph
I was eating my dry Corn Flakes as Annie got ready for work. I think she said she loved me; she kissed the side of my head. Then she was calling out, Knock ’Em Dead.
Poetry Prize
WINNER: Backyard Fence
His backyard pine fence is all that will survive of my father. He rebuilt it twice, the first with wooden scraps from the alley behind their house, so trained to use what’s there than buy.
RUNNER UP: before dispossession there was just soil
“Reconciliation includes anyone with an open mind and an open heart who is willing to look into the future with a new way.”—Chief Robert Joseph
Fiction
The Deal With Roger
Mirabel wants to learn to swim, but she’s been told her whole life she’d just sink to the bottom and that swimming is not only a risk to her, but also to the lifeguards who might have to retrieve her extra-large body from the deep end of a pool.
The Rock and the River
They became the lies they wished they never told—the sharp red of the crawfish pressed against the Abbeville air and coming through the door, the vermilion seeped in through the humidity, over creased and weathered wooden tables, each striation, a story never heard—a mere rock and a river in a universe speckled with stars and stillness.
The Reset
It would be much, much later, after weeks in the hospital for Henry, first on the surgical ward for his shattered ruptured testicle and then as a psychiatric inpatient, and months in therapy for both of them—together and separately—that they would be able to talk about it.
Hybrid/Experimental
A space for exploring experimental and multi-form writing in combination with disciplines including (but not limited to) visual art, mixed-media, science and technology, audio, performance, and video; a space of endless possibility.
Poetry
four poems from the Psychotic Notebooks
NOT A LUXURY: WHEN HE SAYS HE DOESN’T LIKE BIG WORDS HE MEANS HE DOESN’T LIKE POVERTY
Two photographs
I showered/ I dusted/ I am without illusions/ I’ve left me alone
Essays
The Oldest Language I Know
It must have been the beginning of summer because I was playing with my little cousin at our apartment pool. He was in kindergarten at the time.
Dagger in the Dragon's Eye
Inga tells me I’m tight as she slowly pushes a medical rod coated in cold gel deep into my vagina.
Interviews
The Living that Took Place: An Interview with Chelene Knight by The Generous Imaginary
This summer, I was mulling over potential core texts for my graduate class at the Institute for Social Justice—a new course entitled, “Keeping the Creative In Mind: the Poetics and Politics of the Imagination.”
Community-Made: Moving from Scarcity to Abundance
My maternal grandmother lived most of her life in Eldoret, once a small town in the highlands of Kenya, close to the Rift Valley.
Reviews
Doubt and Safety: A review of Samantha Jones' Site Orientation
My interest in Samantha Jones’ Site Orientation stems first of all from my own lifetime of experiences with OCD, and my interest in considering OCD through poetic form.
Lockets, Loops, and Squares: An Omnibus Review of Metatron Press
The following is a review of three Spring 2022 releases from Metatron Press, an independent publisher based in Montreal, Canada. Each stood in the vase a little differently, invited different proximities.
MLAlien Abduction Survivor Testimonial #42069
A few years ago, MLA Chernoff shared a screenshot of my Goodreads review of their debut chapbook, delet this, saying that whenever they felt “imposterussy” or had writer’s block, they simply read the review again.
