Fiction |
“Pierogi”
“I say, my mother is currently playing the part of a cool pal — not asking too many questions — whereas once, she said of herself: grandparent TBD.”
Commentary |
on Dolefully, A Rampart Stands, poems by Paige Ackerson-Kiely
“Her sentences demand — require — the reader’s attention at every turn, making us complicit even as we are aware of how all too quickly we want turn from what’s insidious …”
Poetry |
Five Poems by Ferhad Pirbal
Fiction |
“Grad School” and “The Graphic Canon”
“You write your thesis on how to tell the no-wooden-toys-no-vaccination moms at your daughter’s daycare that you work part-time at Arby’s because teaching 160 first-year college students doesn’t pay all the bills.”
Poetry |
from “Prisoner’s Cinema”
Fiction |
“Sham Couple”
“Nathanael’s mother isn’t dead, she’s just suffering from dementia, but her husband, Achim, is already planning her burial. To be fair, he’s planning his own, too, and even his girlfriend Julika’s …”
Commentary |
on feeld, poems by Jos Charles
“The poems seem, without illusion, to be trying to make a home, not only for the parts of her experience rendered unspeakable in our public conversation, but for her …”
Commentary |
on Sons of Achilles, poems by Nabila Lovelace
“This battle royale aspect — ducking a punch from one direction only to immediately throw one in another — of life on our blocks and in our homes is what Nabila Lovelace attempts to communicate …”
Essay |
“A Vision for the Coming Year”
“As the new year approaches, I give myself a tarot reading — 8 of wands — approaching news, arrows hitting their marks.”
Commentary |
on Threat Come Close, poems by Aaron Coleman
“He enhances the world in view through an agility with language that dares to take on both the tenacity of history and the quaking of his own emotion.”