(Palestinian Flag, with bullet hole, pace Jasper Johns.) “Palestinians are one of the final reminders that a future without colonialism is possible.” – Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud, “A World without Palestinians” In the time since we posted the call for our special issue, “The View from Gaza,” which will be guest-edited by Michel . . .
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We knew what we would lose before we had it, but I know why I stayed.When I close my eyes, I can still seeour kitchen skin and half a lemon left there,turning in on itself like the fistsour mothers made in every cardinal direction,and how late it was in the afternoon.You were rinsing . . .
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A review of Bianca by Eugenia Leigh (Four Way Books, 2023) “Trauma” and “grief,” or rather such shallow incarnations of serious psychological phenomena that they merit air quotes, have become trendy concepts in recent 21st century discourse and media. Movies and television use the traumatic past as a major plot revelation (The Matrix Resurrections, Succession, Yellowjackets), or . . .
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A Review of Under Our Skin, by Joaquim Arena, translated by Jethro Soutar (Unnamed Press, 2023) I like to say that Joaquim Arena’s memoir/travel narrative Under Our Skin, translated by Jethro Soutar and published by Unnamed Press, arrived to me at the perfect time, because I had been learning about extraordinary historical figures from . . .
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In another life, I join the hierophantsof New Jersey, drink petrochemical windsswirling across Route One, a new Delphi,speak their ethylene mysteries. Called back by my inexorable childhood, it becomesimpossible to ignore my sons’ own strangegifts: smokestacks stop smoking, chimneyfires burn green as pine trees, then flare out.—from “In Another Life,” Volume 65, . . .
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Seyyed Gholam Hossein Shabdari Kermani was blessed with a clitoris on his right nipple, or at least that was his pickup line. This is a story about him. At the raw age of five, he discovered pleasure while playing with a pink screwdriver in an empty garage, where his balding father and seven potbellied uncles played . . .
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A Review of I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López (The Feminist Press, 2024) Annell López’ short story collection, I’ll Give You a Reason, brings us to the heart of the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. These stories explore race, colorism, Blackness, identity, sex, and gentrification, among other topics. López gives . . .
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I think you’re still here sometimescalling to me like the thrush at duskinside the woods where I lose my way.I search for you like a ghost myselfin all the usual places, stand on the shorethis side of you and speak to the riverthat flows and stays, stays and flows.—from “This Side of . . .
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Years after it was over and he was gone, I would think of the unfortunate womanhe was living with now and engaged to marry. Poor woman with the face so pale and flat like a slide down a mountain rock. Poor plus-fifty bride-to-be with the voice . . .
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I would have liked to see myself going into the little room at the Café Boscán enraged and pistol in hand looking for his face facing some other face among the tables. He spoke wet, moldy words. I’d have stuck the barrel of the pistol to his forehead and, sublime as he . . .
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