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July 12, 2023
Privilege of Bleeding | Poetry
Kim Hyesoon
A child humiliated by their friend came and talked to n’t. Please take me to a hospital. But n’t told the child to go back and take revenge. And the child said, I am bleeding inside my head. Please take me to a hospital. Everyone bleeds inside their heads! answered n’t. Underneath pure white quilt between pure white walls, Exercising the privilege of bleeding, A child lay still wanting...
July 12, 2023
Picking up the Shards | Why You Should Listen to Bret Easton Ellis
Gabriel Jandali Appel
For the most part, when I hear someone use the word “autofiction,” I stop listening to what that person is saying. Wikipedia defines the term as “a form of fictionalized autobiography” (which could describe, oh, say, half of the Western canon), before specifying that for autofiction to be autofiction, the main character ought to have the same name as the author. I guess people throw the term at Karl Ove...
July 12, 2023
Californian | Poetry
S. Brook Corfman
after Brian Teare, for Hillary Except dew of morning no rain marks the shoulder, relaxed into neon. Drought is a specific kind of lack, rough to touch, translucent, but we pay in many ways for grass. I like information, and you liked when I thought in my poems. The edge of a hand shielding an eye and the pupil simple as a carnation opens or lops off, heavy and...
July 12, 2023
Semi-Unintelligible | Poetry
Isabel Galleymore
Restless with deserving, I’d bought myself a kitten. Semi-unintelligible, she was primed for fable. I could caption her with anything. Though mostly what I wanted was to dress her as a lion. If you like this, then you’ll like that ads frequently addressed me — and I knew it to be true — my lungs forever doting on this specific breath, only to swiftly discard it for the next...
July 12, 2023
My Prince | Fiction
Georgia Petersen
For a minute we sat and we watched the starlings flit. There was more atmosphere than there were things to block the sky. It wasn’t beautiful. It was plain, so it was beautiful, the way a flour sack is beautiful, or a cloud. It was like the birds weren’t getting farther away or moving closer. It was like they were getting bigger and smaller, that’s it. We were by the...
July 12, 2023
Have You Heard This One Before | Fiction
Mariah Kreutter
My ex-boyfriend had a joke that went like this. He called it a joke. It was really more like a story. Here it is: So there’s this guy who, one night, someone breaks into his bedroom and rapes him. The rapist is really quiet, really efficient. He doesn’t leave a trace: no DNA, no signs of forced entry. He’s pretty considerate, actually, uses lube. Uses a condom. Totally blindsides the...
July 12, 2023
“Not Really Disciplined About Disciplines” | An Interview with Cathy Park Hong
The Drift
In her Dispatch for this issue, the scholar Marta Figlerowicz steers readers to Cathy Park Hong’s 2014 essay, “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde,” a lyrical and polemical piece that concludes with a rousing call to other poets of color: “Fuck the avant-garde. We must hew our own path.” Hong’s essay appeared in Lana Turner, which calls itself a “Journal of Poetry & Opinion,” and in the near-decade since,...
July 12, 2023
Revelation | Poetry
Zaynab Bobi
When the doctor said to your mother, She walked out of the clock I painted three scenes: First, your breath went anti-clockwise: the hour hand walking backwards until it was swallowed by time. Second, you crossed out of time with the minute hand stuck between your teeth — night had slipped into your mouth. Third, you drained your mother’s chest and poured yourself into it; swinging back and forth...
July 12, 2023
This Means Nothing to Me | Fiction
Vivian Z. Hu
The roots of the American Nuclear Tree have reached China. Root one of five is poking up in a gnarled spike through the left bank of the Yangtze River. By next week the second root will have not only reached crust but also made its way fully through and then past the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower — the tallest building in China and third tallest in the world....
July 11, 2023
Publicists, Manifesto Pushers, Propagandists | What Happened to the Avant-Garde?
Alphonse Pierre, Becca Rothfeld, Dean Kissick, Eugene Lim, Frank Guan, Gabriel Kuri, hannah baer, Jamie Hood, Liza Batkin, Lucy Sante, Marta Figlerowicz, Melissa Anderson, Timo Andres
It’s commonplace to note that sociopolitical upheaval and artistic experimentation often flourish side by side. But today — despite an alleged “polycrisis” — new modes of cultural production don’t seem to be emerging. Three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent George Floyd rebellion, the arts seem stagnant and stubbornly centralized: franchise fare dominates at the box office; literary output is hampered by monopolized publishers; even...
