Issue 43: 05 Oct 2017

Washing Instructions

By Brenda Birenbaum   You raise your hands to hush the crowd, you raise your hands america america, you raise your hands palms out to hush the crowd to give it voice, translate primordial hoots and jeers and lewd youtubes—flip off the camera, yeah, thrust that pelvis forward, yeah—the gun swells in your pants and […]

Our Lady of the Hurricane

By Jackleen Holton Hookway   wears knifepoint stilettos that she fashioned from the skin of water moccasins that slide underneath the dark slip of brackish floodwater when she takes them off and wades in up to her neck as the twin snakes slither ahead guiding her through a maze of underwater suburbs where she shatters […]

Costumes

By Stephanie Williams   I didn’t shave all month Quiet, itchy rebellion. A silent wind-chime Should at least look the part. They marched I had prior commitments. I connected my daughter’s brows Put flowers in her hair. I posted pictures They asked if we’re Mexican. This year she’ll be a princess $40 on a pink […]

Silk Purse I: An Erasure

from Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC 3/21/16   By Douglas Wood   The bomb clock doesn’t require a number but zero, No matter, The wiped face of the earth What kind of minds write in twisted missiles and the swirling terms imposed by disaster— disaster repeated in the hope it didn’t happen? But it’s precisely […]