Visitants

“Bone Collector” by Khalisa Rae

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  They say the difference between a hoarder and a collector is that collectors see value in objects others would discard,    while a hoarder believes they need an item to survive. I believe I am a hoarder   of perishable people. Prized possessions my fingers strangled to hold to. Marks left on the throats of those whose labels had expired years   ago. Instead of giving them back to the earth, recycling the salvageable   parts of both of us, I affirm them, polish their scratches and set them back on the shelf of my body. How they rest  … Continue reading “Bone Collector” by Khalisa Rae

Choose Your Own Adventure

“Undertale and The Overstory: How Metamodernism is Changing Narratives” by John Tompkins

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[An editor accosts a writer about an essay regarding the connections between Undertale, a video game and a novel The Overstory.] Q: Ok, this is silly. You’re seriously going to compare a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with a video game? Do you: 1) Walk away because you’re pretty certain they’re not going to get it? 2) Pretend like it was a stupid idea and you were thinking out loud? 3) Tell them they have the wrong writer? 4) Go with it and hope they hear you out? “4” “Enter” A: I know. Stick with me though. These two works, I feel, … Continue reading “Undertale and The Overstory: How Metamodernism is Changing Narratives” by John Tompkins

discussions

Searching for Place: An Interview with Jennifer Case by Gabrielle Lawrence

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  In Sawbill: A Search for Place, Dr. Jennifer Case explores her relationship to home and belonging in “an inherently mobile 21st century” by chronicling her research on Sawbill Lodge in Northeast Minnesota, a place of significance and rootedness for her family. I met Jennie Case during my own season of relocation while pursuing an MFA at the University of Central Arkansas. In the beginning, I was drawn to her narrative of mobility through her keen sense of environmentalism. Eventually, we were able to have a conversation about what it means to “live in place” in the midst of movement, … Continue reading Searching for Place: An Interview with Jennifer Case by Gabrielle Lawrence

discussions

“Queer Time Machines: Hauntologies of Literature” by Ben Berman Ghan

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Elizabeth Freeman opens Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories introduction with a description of the 2002 experimental film K.I.P by Nguyen Tan Hoang – a hybrid of queer art and gay porn – a project of “time art” (Freeman 1) that fights against the constraints of what Freeman calls chrononormativity, “the use of time to organize individual human bodies to maximum productivity” (2). Chrononormativity, a subset of chronobiopolitics, is not an argument that linear time is a construct, but that how we choose to value, organize, and segment time is. Western Chrononormativity conditions our collective subjectivity to accept “institutionally and … Continue reading “Queer Time Machines: Hauntologies of Literature” by Ben Berman Ghan

Visitants

3 poems by H.E. Casson

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@Mourning Tell us why you are sad/not sad Mad/not mad Conflicted/devastated/glad That ________ is dead (*click here for thread*)   So we can tell you why you’re wrong   It’s wrong to say You celebrate (Would you, in public, masturbate?) The dropping of a megaphone That magnified   (*buffering*)   Your suffering   To die is saintly Faintly praise Or raise them up Or raise a cup But never celebrate/debate Or mirror hate   It’s wrong to say You found your way By looking through the glass Of a villain Once they pass   It’s wrong to dance on graves … Continue reading 3 poems by H.E. Casson

Visitants

“Frankenstein’s Postpartum Depression” by Micaela Walley

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“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.”    It isn’t hard for me to imagine that childbirth, from start to finish, could be the premise of a great horror story. When I was ten years old, my mother gave … Continue reading “Frankenstein’s Postpartum Depression” by Micaela Walley

Visitants

“Black White and Blue” by Ana Gardner

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        1. The first time a wooden hanger hit my thigh, I crawled into a storybook of Arabian nights, And burrowed through the pages, deep into silence and inky walls   Every story a new home       Save for two.   The tale of an ungrateful boy who out of greed killed his wife and mother Left me cold and angry The man who cut off his sister’s hand made me crumple the pages.   I grieved for those women, wise and good and wronged But wondered how they were so resigned to their tragedy Sad about their … Continue reading “Black White and Blue” by Ana Gardner

Visitants

“SIBYL OF THE INNER CITY” by Lorraine Schein

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She is her own inner circle, circling.  She lives alone in a fifth-floor, walk-up cave. The other side of her door is inscribed with a pentacle, scratched into the metal frame with a knife. She slams the door and enters the loft, goes to the unmade bed, and throws her coat on it. Her bed has a wooden headboard with carved columns on each side. One post holds a silk sleep mask that she wears so the sunlight does not wake her in the morning. She goes to sleep past midnight, and always sleeps till noon. The curtains are closed … Continue reading “SIBYL OF THE INNER CITY” by Lorraine Schein

Visitants

“In the Endless Perfection of Your Absence” by Sahar Khraibani

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It is here, in this specific spot, across from this sky, here, where it all began.   Monday, January 30, 2017 at 2:23 PM. Beirut, Lebanon. I have not written about the sea in a while. It has become increasingly harder to think about it, to imagine it, to smell it. I went around telling people that I am taking a hiatus from it being my subject. It being the Mediterranean, the only sea I have ever been in close contact with. I was terrified of repetition, of sounding like a broken record, of writing something I don’t understand. What … Continue reading “In the Endless Perfection of Your Absence” by Sahar Khraibani

Visitants

“She” and “Dear Future” by Marc Shapiro

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  SHE   She used to like to do it in the morning When sunlight knifed through curtains Highlighting her movements Cat like Like cool easy jazz Then one day something left her Died A single tear tarnishing cheek It rolled down Moving her into the dark Where she continues to do it In silhouette In emptiness Alone       DEAR FUTURE   I am Juan I am barrio I am Washington I am ghetto I don’t ball I don’t bang I am the neighborhood freak And I have the beatdowns to prove it I see a future  In … Continue reading “She” and “Dear Future” by Marc Shapiro