A JOURNAL OF ART + LITERATURE
by Anna Sandy-Elrod Anne Champion’s The Good Girl is Always a Ghost inhabits, identifies, praises, and laments the multifaceted, complex nature of womanhood. Champion writes odes to women—Sandra Bland, Amy Winehouse, Billie Holliday—and poems in their personas—Indira Ghandi, Bettie Page, Eva Perón—in a way that devastates, humbles, and breathes life into women across history, across... Continue Reading →
Animals Of Failed Memory—Ghosts Certain—situations, occurrences, certain people—I've tried very many times to forget. & I've failed each time. & there are certain things a man cannot forget whether they want to or not. It isn’t a man’s decision to make, maybe God’s. I was promised by one of my *fathers, He said he'd... Continue Reading →
by Cecilia Savala In Dots & Dashes, Winner of the 2016 Crab Orchard Review Series in Poetry Open Competition Award, Jehanne Dubrow speaks to other military families in the voice of academia and to academics in the voice of a Navy wife. Her poems, written in strict form like military rules, mirror the posture of... Continue Reading →
MOTHING Not long ago, I wanted nothing more than for him to pay as much attention to me as he does to moth genitalia. Hiking into remote ridges, rigging the white sheet and black light, sitting outside through the night, face up close to the swaying sheet. Empty vials quickly become flutter-filled, shaking, then still.... Continue Reading →
Henry, Henry Rosalie came down from up north to see the pond for herself. She’d left a note for her grandmother, asleep on the couch, that she was taking her Monte Carlo, and drove six hours, stopping only to eat gas station burritos and pre-bagged whole dill pickles and wash under her arms in cramped bathroom... Continue Reading →
by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor A few months ago, I bought some flowers for my wife. She likes Queen Anne’s Lace, Anne being her grandmother’s name and their shared favorite flower, but the florist had none, so I settled for a mixture of orange and white flowers, the names of which I have since forgotten. In the... Continue Reading →
Corner Store Driving through the center of a town that’s not mine, I saw a store on the corner of a street I’d never cross and in the window a sign said SALE said CLOSING and it made me miss you for being gone, miss a stranger for never having met. I fear next time you... Continue Reading →
by Geoff Watkinson I was interviewing for a part-time editor position at a small newspaper the other day when, about 20 minutes in, the publisher asked, “Why write? Why do you do it?” Immediately, I said, “Obsession. I find things I’m curious about and I get obsessed.” That question–“why do you write?”–is something I’ve asked... Continue Reading →
A Man Who Prays with His Gun I wanted to write a Galkaiyo story about goats in a mosque, about a man walking into that same mosque with his AK-47, setting it down before him to pray, and how I’d look back a few years later, thinking: “Did you come to pray for the sake... Continue Reading →
by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor It’s true what they say, though acknowledging this doesn’t make it easier to accept: sometimes you can’t go home. I was exiting a toxic relationship, searching for a place within my friendships, and for the first time in my life wondering who I was, worrying it wasn’t who I believed myself to... Continue Reading →
NEW SOUTH 