An Editors’ Note
“Humankind, I have loved you all. Be vigilant.”
— Julius Fučík
LOST
Benjamin Niespodziany
I needed to make it to a lake. My friends were waiting. I knocked on a door. An old woman answered. “Yes?” she said. She sounded like my dead grandmother. She looked like my dead grandmother. She was not my dead grandmother. “I’m trying to find a lake,” I said. “Which lake?” she asked. “I don’t know which lake,” I said. “Lots of lakes around here,” the woman like my dead grandmother said. My phone rang and I couldn’t read the screen. Couldn’t see the number. I apologized to the woman like my dead grandmother and answered the call. It was my dead grandmother. “I’m trying to find a lake,” she said. “Which lake?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lots of lakes around here,” I said. “Who is it?” asked the woman like my dead grandmother but who was defnitely not my dead grandmother. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know either,” the woman said. “And neither do I,” my dead grandmother replied.
WINTER RENEWED
Joshua Anthony
no birds but smoke from a fire. the air is cold sun melting snow on asphalt. shopping carts spun out in the slush and exhaustion. this is the anticipation of spit. this day is a lost city. this was always midnight solstice. fire engines so tired they slip by without lights without sirens only the tambourines louder now over every pothole.
because let’s face it: || part of crawling out || of a broken home is || being lured in || by those with || crowded hearts || because you’ve got a shell-shocked history, too || where love was a rarity || and so || you continue || to seek affection from those || who can’t || deliver || —until your version of priceless nineties collectibles || mutates into this wild ebay assortment of damaged goods || where you specialize in || relations with || the clinically detached || and you do it for no other reason than || the familiarity of it all || and yah, that too || is tricky-sticky territory || slippery slope, ya dope! || but you try tellin’ the attraction that || see if it responds || or goes and plows right on through || in its own stubborn ways || in its own twisted gps-routed path
so anyway || back to the wrath of raph— || he is me || and we are he || and we are here || with our pained grimace grins || sip sip sippin’ our tea || in this never-ending endeavor || to soothe || our inconsolable angst || and sure, it scorches our tongues || we, the self-shredded || are, after all || byproducts of || our own impatience || and we the turtly people of united rage || sheathe our sensitivity || with these cloth masks sewn || from years and years of tears withheld || we, this nation of modern indignation!
but the truth of the matter here is || we’ve been stuck in these sewers || long enough to know || that the enemy we face || time and time again || isn’t shredder. || shredder’s nothing || nothing but another opponent to tackle || this totally beatable—external—entity || but that thing? || in the mirror? || that reflection? || in the glass? || that’s our top villainous threat.
and it’s a hell of a lot tougher || than that damn kernel || that’ll dislodge itself—eventually || (in its own time) || but creatures like us we || just can’t let things be we || toil and disrupt the flow ‘cause || fuck you and fuck patience || we didn’t suffer that puddle of ooze || just to sit back and watch || as our backs bend || and break || beneath the toxic weight || of socie-tea || —especiall-ea when it’s all ass-backwards || and painfull-ea arbitrar-ea
AFTER FRANK O’HARA
Norman Minnick
an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I have no cash and some leftover fish there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there a Chinese poet stands alone in a field in the Tang dynasty torn between heaven and earth (mainly because some errant translator kept him there) and I’ve got two-day-old fish that must be eaten before it begins to rot
LEVEE IN YELLOW
Emiliana Renuart
I know I’ve got it all wrong. Hello, wildness. Nature does not stop. Even the toes insistent on defying the flight of life. Head broken off at the neck. Trumpet pitched over. The stage is just one room. Behind the door is a wall. In the shoe is a foot. I hear horns, though they only became distinct to me just now, just right now, rounding the bend.
THE POLAR BEAR ESCAPED FROM THE
ZOO
Mathieu Cailler SAN DIEGO
and trudged north for hours alongside a desolate highway. The polar bear hitchhiked and thought it strange that the signal for such a miserable activity was the thumbs-up. Hours later, a rumbling eighteen-wheeler pulled over and sounded its air brake. The polar bear climbed aboard and savored the swirling A/C inside the truck’s cabin. “Marty,” the driver said, extending his hand. “Where you headed?” he asked. “Alaksa,” the polar bear said. “Want to see my birthland.” Marty said he could take him as far as Fresno, but that he wasn’t headed to Alaska. The polar bear nodded. “You never been?” Marty said. “Born and raised at the zoo,” the polar bear answered. Marty pulled out his cell phone and showed the polar bear some videos of Alaska on YouTube. Marty pointed to a Wendy’s chocolate Frosty in the cupholder and told the polar bear it was all his if he wanted it. Marty then put the truck in gear and rumbled away. The polar bear stared through the windshield at the dashed yellow lines on the highway. To the polar bear—they were all pawprints, leading the way home.
NOLI ME TANGERE
John Blair
. . .when we touch/ we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone. Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know”
The crack at the edge of the entrance stone is like a filament of awareness, right at the cusp where it burns itself out. Day, night, day again. Night.
You wait. You do not pray because you cannot pray. You can as a thing only lay where you’ve been laid, a slick of oil daubed onto your forehead for luck
wicking itself into the linen. The filament flickering, trying to go out. Not trying, really. Just going out. There were signs. A kiss under the abiding olive trees.
A woman who had held seven different demons inside the well of her mind, each one a wish that she hadn’t thought to ask, arriving there to be apostle to the apostles who loved only suffering. Who, like you, were fishers of men, untouched and untouchable in any version of this that gets told. The air that seeps in is dusted with pollen and a scent like myrrh or prophecy or whatever unwashed dream plays the part. Mostly, though, with nothing much at all, like the rumored hollow bones of angels, made so that like
raptors their wings can lift and carry away. Let vacancy tell its story in its own way, as a palimpsest of every other story of miracles scribbled on scroll and tablet and funerary wall.
An empty slab is its own kind of weather, astonishing and ruinous, sprinkled invisibly with skin cells. Touch me not, O touch me not. Death is an obligation, beloved one, not a victory. It is a failure
SUNsparrowSEA
S U N
Celeste Funari Muse
starTREEant
Celeste Funari Muse
star
I know that if you could you would return to the village of your childhood, long before the Greek dream. I know it, because I look at you through the eye of the talisman, the eye of an animal, you are silent like a secret folding into itself.
You shouldn’t have left anything behind. You should have just kept the secret. Even now you can walk up to the small house. The animal within you can guide you, like the eye of the talisman.
If you get there, you’ll be on your own If you get there, stay
It’s not too late and this is no longer the dream for which you gave your life it is a dream you carry up the mountain where, again, you become nobody.
Then you’re back in your village where you prayed to be somebody. Then I’m back in the car where I prayed to be your son.
Your voice no longer fills the car like old spring snow.
We’re silent like the future.
translated from the Greek by Panagiota Stoltidou
PANIC RICOCHETS AT THE MALL
Alejandro Borge Osorio
it’s okay, it’s just , it’s okay, it’s OKAY , it’s okay, uh guys , it’s okay, laugh! it’s okay, wait why, it’s okay, a stain , it’s okay, I heard , it’s okay, what , it’s okay, maybe if , it’s okay, are you , it’s okay, we can , it’s okay, you , it’s okay, is going , it’s okay, we make , it’s okay, laughing , it’s okay okay, wash it , it’s okay, I am , it’s okay, on? it’s okay, her laugh , it’s okay, at , it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she’ll , it’s okay, trying , it’s okay, omg , it’s okay, we can , it’s okay, me? it’s okay, it’s okay, come , it’s okay, it’s OKAY , it’s okay, what , it’s okay, all , it’s okay, guys , it’s okay, it’s okay, out I , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, happened? it’s okay, calm , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, it’s okay, think! it’s okay, give me , it’s okay, is okay, it’s okay, down , it’s okay, don’t , it’s okay, it’s okay, please , it’s okay, time , it’s okay, that , it’s okay, and eat , it’s okay, laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay , it’s okay, more , it’s okay, soy sauce? it’s okay, oh , it’s okay, stop I , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, time , it’s okay, oh no , it’s okay, yes let’s , it’s okay, wait guys , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, is it? it’s okay, eat before , it’s okay, I can’t , it’s okay, I need to , it’s okay, I know , it’s okay, on your , it’s okay, we , it’s okay, If you , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, to just , it’s okay, skirt? it’s okay, lose our , it’s okay, laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, oh no! it’s okay, minds , it’s okay, then , it’s okay, it’s okay, she’ll , it’s okay, but I , it’s okay, are you , it’s okay, over , it’s okay, I laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay, come out , it’s okay, love this , it’s okay? it’s okay, something silly , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, her , it’s okay, skirt and , it’s okay, no don’t be , it’s okay, now point , it’s okay, they’re it’s okay, shell , it’s okay, it might be , it’s okay, sad , it’s okay, yes! it’s okay, trying to help , it’s okay, soon , it’s okay, ruined , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, point! it’s okay, just laugh , it’s okay.
again, sweating for a way to reach ten, but one can’t simply conjure up a missing toe out of roaring distress.
“Nine, right?” asks Sebastián.
I graze each of Sebastián’s hairy knuckled toes one more time. Even in panic, I’m delighted to touch his toes.
“Nine,” I say.
“Count again, please.”
I count for a fourth time. In place of Sebastián’s right pinky toe there’s nothing: no scar, no tiny stump, no bone sticking out, no congealed blood, as if the toe had never grown.
“Your pinky toe is missing,” I say, pruned from the water and blushing.
Sebastián knows that when I blush I’m lying or, at best, hiding something. I’m terrible at deceit, but with the scalding water, the steam, and both of us panicked and sweating, Sebastián doesn’t clock my guilt. Besides, his missing pinky isn’t my fault. I didn’t eat it.
The man comes at night, stands by the entrance to our closet where moonlight and streetlight shine least, and smiles. His teeth are large, square, widely gapped, and bright. Each like a lamp carrying its own set of fluorescents. The rest of him is utter darkness, no eyes, no nose, no arms, no legs, the sleek tubular shape of an ironed-out ghost. The Smiling Man also wears a large wide-brimmed fedora, almost too wide to be taken seriously if he didn’t carry it with a panache that shuns the ridiculous. I’ve known this man since childhood, forever smiling in the darkest corners of the rooms I sleep in, quiet until he gets hungry. When I was six, he spoke for the first time, “Feed me,” he said, and ate my left middle finger down past the knuckle; at thirteen, he ate two-thirds of my right ear; at twenty-one a peach-sized chunk out of my calf. I let Sebastián think my
Smiling Man isn’t a medical condition.
His phone rings again. “Seems important,” I say.
Sebastián ventures no effort, and I answer for him.
“She says it’s urgent,” I whisper.
He takes the phone. His voice comes out thin, and he asks his client for a second. He clears his throat, straightens himself up, and finally speaks as if his toe weren’t missing. “I’ll take care of it.” He hangs up. He accepts the pair of socks I hand him and slips them on without looking.
“I have to go.”
I nod.
He stares at me as if I should stop him. As if I should tell him he’s crazy to put work over a missing toe, but I smile and kiss him goodbye.
I list things when I’m frazzled. I list the friends I met when I lived in Berlin, after I’d lost my first two loves and decided not to love deeply ever again, when I was easier with my skin and my drugs and I swung naked over the Spree on a makeshift swing waiting for the sun to rise, before I came to Mexico City and met Sebastián. There was Leni who thought I’d be a famous artist one day—I crocheted such pretty things. There was Akiko who photographed flowers and printed them so small, but printed so many that she covered an abandoned wall—of the many that stood in Berlin—and transformed it into a portal glittering in miniscule flower-shaped fairies. There was a guy who fanned himself with a red paper fan, a fan he later gifted me because he liked the way I danced, a fan I keep tucked inside one of my desk drawers. I was someone else then. Almost darkless. A Mateo swinging naked waiting for the sun to rise.
In our closet, I list Sebastián’s dress shirts, nothing too attention seeking, pressed into stiffness by his beloved iron. I list
Andrej showed me a dent where his left nipple used to be. He didn’t fret. We were young. “Maybe it just fell off,” he said. Things like that happened. But after feasting on his nipple, the Smiling Man became antsy, swaying, and, a few months later, he swallowed Andrej whole. I swore I wouldn’t share a bedroom with anyone else ever again. Then Checo appeared, and he was so committed, so serious, so in love with me I couldn’t resist. I was thirty-four. Eleven years had passed, and the Smiling Man seemed less hungry. He hadn’t even eaten any more of me. One morning an apple-sized chunk of Checo’s ass had disappeared, and I decided to fight the man once and for all. I hit him, kicked him, hammered him, tried to poison him. I stabbed, hatcheted and axed him. But he’s squishy and pops back unhurt, like immortal jello. I shifted strategies and tried scolding the Smiling Man, saying he wasn’t allowed to eat any more. I threatened to despise him. Think him the worst companion ever. The Smiling Man only swayed and ground his teeth. Checo would be eaten too, I realized, and so, I warned him. He was the first person I told the Smiling Man existed. I proposed we fight the man together, immediately certain that was the way to do it, together, wielding something magical like the power of love. Checo called me a nutjob. He needed medical help—couldn’t I see a chunk of his ass had vanished?—and all I could do was speak of battling a made-up childhood monster. How could I be so childish, so callous!—Checo didn’t know which was worse. I left him. He’s still somewhere, ass-bitten but alive.
A month after the toe incident, Sebastián comes home from work and lingers inside the hall by the apartment’s entrance. I say, “Hello.”
He doesn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?”
Sebastián’s eyes are puffed pink. His hair wild. There’s an awesome beauty to his bedraggledness. I want to hold the back part of his neck where his hair prickles and kiss him, but he exudes an angry aura that prevents me.
“Undress,” he orders.
I shove my jeans down. I should’ve taken my boots off first because I stumble trying to ram my jeans past my feet. In the meantime, I slip out of my sweater and peel my t-shirt off so that his furious gloom can amuse itself with my bare chest. I drop to the floor, unlace my boots, yank and throw them. I stand up and, naked, spread my arms in a silent ta-da! Sebastián limps toward me as if his foot hurt though I know it doesn’t. Whatever the man eats leaves no trace, including pain.
Sebastián’s face hangs a centimeter away from mine. There’s alcohol in his breath, sweet like jasmine at dusk. When I was a teenager, I sat by my bedroom window letting jasmine waft in as I ran the back of my fingers over my lips—the way I thought a kiss would feel. I want Sebastián to lick the remnants of my eaten ear, but he pinches it instead. He grazes my cheek with his stubble and travels down my body with his nose. He kneels. I get hard. He takes my hand and traces the emptiness where my middle finger should be. He sits on his heels and swivels me around. I gaze past our large windows, eleven floors up, at Mexico City extending far into a glow beyond the horizon. This city where he was born, and I try to convince myself I belong. Sebastián brushes the dip in my calf with his fingers. I imagine a young, hovering version of myself watching us from outside, happy because I’m not alone. How did he use to explain his loneliness? Floaty. Loneliness as being unanchored. I won’t have Sebastián much longer. I’ll leave before he gets eaten.
“What happened to you?” he asks, pinching the skin where my calf used to be. The apartment feels empty in my
silence. I get goosebumps. “Tell me.”
“You won’t love me anymore.”
“Please.”
I turn. He’s so sad and scared. My mouth opens before I can stop it. “I’ll show you.”
We wait in bed. Our room devoured in shadows. No one but myself has been able to see the Smiling Man, but now because he wants to, I expect Sebastián will be able to see him too. The man is taking a long time to show up. Sebastián nods off. I’m scared. What kind of bonkers plan is this? If Sebastián sees the Smiling Man, he’ll be terrified. He’ll get rid of me sooner. Won’t even contemplate sticking it out with me to fight the Smiling Man together.
Still, I can hope.
The man finally appears. I elbow Sebastián awake. He yelps.
“You see him?”
Sebastián scuttles next to me, almost on top. “Is it a demon?”
I never regarded the man as evil, only hungry. “He’s the Smiling Man,” I say.
The man’s grin widens.
“Did you summon him?”
“He appears on his own. Ever since I was a kid.”
The man glides closer to the bed. Sebastián thrusts his back against me, nesting his legs on his chest.
“Feed me,” the man says in his twittering voice.
“He’ll eat us!”
“He won’t,” I say. “It’s too soon.” The man didn’t eat Andrej until months after his first bite.
The Smiling Man worms his way into bed and seizes
our comforter with his teeth.
“Mateo!” Sebastián howls.
The comforter flies across the room.
“Mateo!”
I jump on the man, slip, and land hard on the floor. He’s slick like a greased-up eel. Sebastián kicks himself farther up the bed. The Smiling Man slithers, his teeth hounding Sebastián’s feet. I hurl myself on the man but skid back onto the floor. Sebastián kicks. Knocks the man’s fedora right off. I believed his hat was an inextricable part of his body.
“Yes! Kick him!” I shout, getting back on my feet.
Sebastián attacks again. This time, his foot plunges deep into the man’s head. Stuck. While Sebastián tugs on his leg to get his foot unstuck, the man’s head morphs into a swallowing mouth, dragging Sebastián inside him. I dig my fingernails into the man, refusing to slip off one more time. I climb him. I bite. Pinch. Squeeze. His organs wriggle underneath like worms inside a lubed up punching bag. Sebastián flails and groans, struggling to drag himself away. He reaches for the headrest with a freakish spasm of his arm. He squeaks a bitter, stabbing note and goes limp.
“No!” I jerk my heft backwards, hauling the man down with me. Something gives within the man, a nook where my arms squeeze without almost any effort. Like colossal seltzer, a bubbling fizzes inside him. The man vomits my now slimy husband. He straightens, lifting me up with him, and whips his body. I fly across the room. The light is knocked out of me. I can’t locate the muscles to get up and continue fighting.
“Mateo.” Sebastian’s voice travels like a spark.
He’s alive! Suddenly it’s simple to locate my bones, my tendons, my muscles, my breath. I bounce back to my feet, primed and ready, but the man has vanished. His fedora lies on
Sebastián flings one limp arm toward me. Like he wants me. He could also be shooing me away.
I zip up my bag.
He takes my hand and guides me to him.
“We’ll fight the man,” he says. “I can spare a few more toes if I get to keep you.”
I could ask why, but I keep my mouth shut. I snuggle on his slime-covered chest. His nervous heart beats on my ear. Mine is a whole drums section. I wait to catch the moment when our hearts sync up. They don’t. Seems as if they’ll continue skipping in a boundless reach for one another.
AT THE CAFÉ HURACÁN ACROSS FROM SALOMĖJA NERIS
(“THE TRAITOR”) HIGH SCHOOL
Rimas Uzgiris
Pietro’s cigar smoke hardly made a dent in the air. This is Griselda, he said (I think), leaning back on the wooden bench, saying – your colleague, Vilnius University, Lithuanian philology. But you’re in translation studies, poetry, yes? Yes, but I don’t think Griselda was impressed, her hair settled to the tonal range of our clouds, her body swaddled tight against the sharp autumn day, her smile making me hunch like the wind that whipped the roofs of German Street as she mentioned how happy she was that Latakas won the Jotvingian Prize this year (he seems post-modernly atavistic to me, which, I admit, is kind of interesting), and how she loves Stankevičius no matter what anyone says (ah, it starts to make sense, I thought: the old lady who loves the powerfully elevated voice, the one which I once tried to capture in English, but it fled from me like Keats’ bird), and she talked of living in this Soviet block-building (built over the ghetto’s ruins) as a young woman, of how Širvys came to her apartment to watch soccer because he never had a TV, how Vačiūnaitė lived just upstairs, how Marcinkevičius would drop by, how so-and-so would play chess with her, and so-and-so brought so many books from the library (ones that were not so easy to get, I was meant to understand), and she would read and read, a straight A book nerd reminiscing about the house with the writers –because the Soviets liked to keep them all in one place. Oh the impromptu recitals! The parties they had! The memory of Vačiūnaitė
giving birth before her very eyes made those now dimmed salon lights sparkle and flare like candles before they go out. The memory of the lesser poet jumping off the balcony brought the shadow of a broken body to the mirror of her memory. But it was all as it had to be, for this is what is expected of poets. And you couldn’t help but feel that this had been the best time of her life, even as the translator from Italy tried to moderate her: “That’s how it looks to you now.” But I knew that’s how it was for her, the young woman in love with words fawning over the inspired native tongues of a colonized nation (remember how Sartre told Plečkaitis they should write in Russian), being accepted even if it meant smuggling Širvys’s booze into the Vilnius Žalgiris match because he was too big to be caught with such a thing, and she, well, she was she and is still so. I don’t think she ever moved out.
Emiliana Renuart lives in St. Louis, Missouri where she works with STL’s oldest indie bookstore. She is originally from Michigan, where she attended Kalamazoo College and worked with and advocated for young readers and writers.
Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: a novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have been featured in over one hundred publications such as Wigleaf , the Saturday Evening Post , and the Los Angeles Times . Cailler has garnered numerous awards for his writing, including a Pushcart Prize; a Short Story America Prize; and accolades from the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festivals. Connect with him on social media @writesfromla or visit mathieucailler.com.
John Blair ’s seventh book, The Shape of Things to Come , was published last fall by Gival Press.
Celeste Funari Muse celestefunarimuse.com
Ben Miller is the author of the recently released Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2020-2022 (Raritan Skiff Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press) and River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll Amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa (Lookout Books). His writing has been anthologized in Best American Essays and Best American Experimental Writing, and his awards include fellowships from the NEA and the Radcliffe Institute.
Panagiota Stoltidou read Literary Studies and Sociolinguistics at Freie Universität Berlin and Columbia University in New York City. Her research, reviews and poetry have appeared in Comparative Literature Review , Hopscotch Translation , and elsewhere. A German Academic Scholarship Holder since 2023, she is currently pursuing a master’s in Comparative Literature in Berlin and Zurich. She is the editor-inchief of Filmpost .
Alejandro Borge Osorio is studying Critical Ethnic Studies and Creative Writing. They are from Barranquilla, Colombia and Demorest, GA. They are a poet and artist who is committed to exploring all avenues of artistic and academic expression. They encourage you to check out Roots , The Ethnicity and Race studies journal. They enjoy thrifting, going on adventures and meeting new people. Follow them in this life @jbo.03.
Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of Monstrilio , winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize, finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a Book of the Year by NPR , Elle , Goodreads and others. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan and is the current Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures.
Imani Nikelle is a southern-born, East Coast dwelling poet & filmmaker. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Callaloo , Poet Lore , Cordite Poetry Review , and elsewhere. She is currently earning an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.
Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator, author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books), Tarp (poems translated into Lithuanian), translator of eight poetry collections from Lithuanian, and the Venice Biennale Golden Lion winning opera Sun and Sea . Uzgiris was born and raised in the USA, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant and NEA Translation Fellowship, he teaches at Vilnius University.