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PETP, or, Unintended Consequences

November 17, 2023 - By Jim Hicks

(Illustration by Rose M. Spielman; Psychology: OpenStax, p. 519, Fig 14.22

“There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.”

Since the October War on Gaza began, I’m told, we’ve been killing a thousand children a week.

For an instant, when Joe Biden said, don’t repeat our mistakes, there was a flash, a glimmer, a mirage maybe, but there was something. After all, sometimes we do learn, sometimes we know the history, sometimes we’re...

10 Questions for Sumita Chakraborty

November 16, 2023 - By Franchesca Viaud

When cleaved of their fur, rabbits look like they do not come from our planet.

Perhaps they came to us, bare, from yours.

Perhaps some of you came here with these creatures, their muscle and fat
               smooth around their lungs—the size of thumbs—and their eyes
               protruding from their faces, like emaciated cats.
—from "Track Eight: 'Alienation of Affection,'" Volume 64, Issue 3 (Fall 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first poems I ever finished is called “Cabinet of...

Open Statement in Solidarity with Palestine

November 10, 2023 - By Woman Life Freedom

Jin, Jiyan, Azadî as in Free Palestine

We, the undersigned, who have been pleading for Jin Jiyan Azadî in the last year, demand an end to genocide, call for immediate ceasefire, and express our solidarity with the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle.

As we witness genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli state’s occupying forces against Palestinians, overwhelmingly the people of Gaza, as well as the residents of the West Bank, we are filled with anger, pain and devastation. We are deeply troubled by the racist, dehumanising language and hate speech casually broadcasted by the Western media, which has complicitly facilitated the ongoing violence. Sitting in an unspeakable grief for the countless lives and voices lost during this tragic...

October 2023 Contributor Publications

November 8, 2023 - By Staff

Natascha Bruce's translation of Can Xue's novella, Mystery Train, is out now from Sublunary Editions. Bruce's translation of Samwai Lam appeared in our Fall 2022 issue.

...

The New Bicycle

November 6, 2023 - By Darcy Day Zoells

Excerpt from The New Bicycle. Forthcoming from Clavis Publishing, 24 pp., November 2023.

Recently Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli conductor, stated that, “Music is one way to bring people together—we are all equal human beings who deserve peace, freedom, and happiness.” Of course, we could say not only music, but all of the arts. Dialectically we read the Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said, “Where cruelty and injustice are concerned, hopelessness is submission, which I believe is immoral.” Does art stop the hopelessness? The act of creating or encountering something beautiful?

During these times of war and uncertainty, what is the role of the artist and the arts? Judith Butler asks to realize a world of freedom and equality,...