thwack

thwack

blockage no. 8 by Marie Nunalee

Marie Nunaleeblockage no. 8 a bumblebee, Kamikaze pilot in disguise, balancing ancillary, damp sidewalk-situated, papier mache pinions flashing faintly. six coarse-haired legs flicker for the troubleshoot-detection of external demise; antennae circuits flip on, flip off, blow fuses red and bright.…

A HUNGER ARTIST by Henry Marchand

Henry MarchandA HUNGER ARTIST The medium is biological, human cells crafted in a sterile environment to simulate body parts: an ear, a finger, a foot. Clyde Averill has become renowned for his work, the first bio-artist to achieve such astonishing,…

TELESCOPES by Kristen Sharp

Kristen SharpTELESCOPES In a dress with sequins the color of champagne, her legs like bone, she crouched on the beach and dug her hand under the packed wet sand. The New Year had been mostly Manhattans and whiskey-gingers and drunk…

LEXICON by Lori Lamothe

Lori LamotheLEXICON I’ve forgotten the language of cities, of travel. I insert the room key upside down, stumble over a couch in the lobby, ride the wrong subway line, walk South instead of North. New York hems me in, surrounds…

R IS FOR RESTLESS by Christine Hamm

Christine HammR IS FOR RESTLESS Palm Beach, a fake emerald bracelet scratching your wrist. You crawl to the bed, the industrial carpet rubbing its cigarette stink all over you. You remember the man’s hands, the scars and words scrawled across…

THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL by Anthony Wallace

Anthony WallaceTHE CHRISTMAS ANGEL He sets up the Christmas tree in the family room, untangles the lights and strings them around the tree in lazy loops from top to bottom, drapes a few strands of tinsel at the ends of…

IN THE MID-OUGHTIES by Sam Cha

Sam ChaIN THE MID-OUGHTIES IN THE MID-OUGHTIES, we thought we were men. We were all married for a year and a half or so. Our wives played cello or bass and read two books a year. We left our doctoral…

LEMON TUESDAY by Jo Beckett-King

Jo Beckett-KingLEMON TUESDAY It was Lemon Tuesday and so far it had not lived up to expectations. His gran had made pancakes, smaller and fatter than any his mum ever made, and while he was eating, his mum had come…

BIRTHDAY POEM by Monica Wendel

Monica WendelBIRTHDAY POEM There’s a secret 1950s housewife in me that loves amphetamines. Do you love it too? The zip zap? The blue boogers? Is that the right word? I found dark lipstick in my room and wore it when…

LOOK, HERE by Lisa Piazza

Lisa PiazzaLOOK, HERE For this, I use my grandfather’s axe. Pull it carefully from behind the dead cat’s carrier in the garage, where it rests dusty and dull, subdued by seasons more or less come and gone. More because fifteen…

FRANCESCA by Mohammadreza Mirzaei

Mohammadreza MirzaeiFRANCESCA I was exhausted. It was an hour since we parked the car down the mountain and came up the slope. I had spent all my life in Tehran, but I had never been in Tochal, which was one…

HOW A HEART by Sean Lyon

Sean LyonHOW A HEART Tricia the three-toed sloth started to slipper my hand into her undergrowth. “Wow,” I clickered, “I’m in love with this rainforest.” Then she maffled her tongue down some other toucan’s throat. How a heart emflampers under…

Five Paintings by Tish Ingersoll

Tish IngersollFIVE PAINTINGS Interviewed by Anastasiya Shekhtman How do you begin a painting? I often start a painting using a level and making several horizontal lines, varying distances apart. Then, using black acrylic, I use gestural lines to overlap them. Finally,…

YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa

YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa If God looked for Yvonne would he find her? If God looked down, past stars and satellites, through storm clouds thick and grey as dryer lint, would he see Yvonne in a stolen van, Yvonne in a darkened shopping plaza with Ma’s Diner and A-1 Hardware, Crafts Basket and Pets Plus? Yvonne is down on options, down on her luck. Listening to the sighs and snores of her dog asleep in the back seat, the beat of rain on the roof. Her world the smell of wet dog. Her face in the mirror, hair wild, curling in the damp. Everything about her seems high-contrast, vampirish. Face white, except for that bruise her cover-up won’t cover. Tired eyes. White eyeliner is the trick for that, Teena had taught her. No white eyeliner in Yvonne’s make-up bag. No black, either. Almost out of tricks. She pats more cover-up on her eyelids, feels the oils in the makeup separate.

BLOODSUCKERS by Zach Fishel

Zach FishelBLOODSUCKERS Having sliced mosquitoes From the air all week, he sits with mail Neglected like the quiet granite Of New Hampshire. The enormity of moths is felt here. Thinking of the letters. That even in this loneliness there is…

PHENOMENON by Donna Vorreyer

Donna VorreyerPHENOMENON Homes awash in moonlight, in streetlight, the whole neighborhood hunched and hiding, watching the sky. All of the children are adrift, huddled in bushes, running under branches well past their usual bedtimes. It is a strange phenomenon, but…

TOURIST by Barbara Nishimoto

Barbara NishimotoTOURIST It was July, winter in La Serena, Chile, and Lily sat in a pretty little plaza, her feet resting on the battered train case that her mother had bought at Sears long ago.  Hard shell Samsonite.  Part of…

VINYL by Brian Druckenmiller

Brian DruckenmillerVINYL I was ready to die, so I jumped off the highest bridge in town, the river a dark frozen mass ready to accept my mangled mess of skin and insides. I detached from my descending body and watched…

ROMEO & JULIETTE by Kevin Tosca

Kevin ToscaROMEO & JULIETTE Romeo sent this text to Juliette: “Goodnight Julie.” She didn’t respond. It was their first night not sleeping together in two years. He didn’t know what she was thinking. The next morning, he had to return…

CONTROLLED HALLUCINATIONS by John Sibley Williams reviewed by Anna Strong

CONTROLLED HALLUCINATIONS by John Sibley Williams FutureCycle Press reviewed by Anna Strong Controlled Hallucinations is a collection of questions, interiors, and barriers—stepping into the world of these poems means being alone with your thoughts and the images and associations your brain creates only in its quietest moments. The title of the collection already suggests that these poems will occupy a space far removed from the outside world, but John Sibley Williams invites readers into this space with an introduction to the collection in the form of an untitled poem (following the dedication, which is to “the coming extinctions”). The introductory poem is a series of infinitive clauses (“To be the effect. / To be a thoughtful pause / and restrained response. / To the the passion of raking nails.”) which collectively define what can be expected from the ensuing poems.

BLINDING: THE LEFT WING by Mircea Cărtărescu reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin

BLINDING: THE LEFT WING by Mircea Cărtărescu, in the English translation by Sean Cotter, Archipelago Books, 464 pages Reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin It starts in adolescence. The questions come to you while lying in bed (certainly now with a growing awareness of your sexuality), the walls of your room expanding into endless grainy darkness, as if the room itself could encompass the entire world: why am I here, why is there anything at all? The questions may haunt you at age 13 or 15 or 17, but by adulthood they tend to feel banal. Unanswerable, impossible, if taken seriously debilitating, they are in a word blinding, and so you tend to avert your gaze. But suppose you can’t, suppose the inviolable white light only draws you closer, to madness possibly, to paint or write or drink or pray (to what God, tell me?) almost certainly. And so perhaps you scribble, the pages of your notebooks filling with furious script, like eons of sediment piling into sad mute mountains no one else will ever excavate or carve or climb. Unless, perhaps, you are a writer of the caliber of Mircea Cărtărescu, the celebrated Romanian author of the 1996 book Blinding: The West Wing. Cărtărescu is a poet, essayist, and novelist of unsurpassing imaginative vision and startling bravery. He has won several Romanian literary prizes, but beyond Romania and France, where a few of his novels have been translated, and Holland, where he has taught, Cărtărescu, a child of the post-War communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, is rather unknown. His only other novel to be out in an English edition is the 1993 Nostalgia, published here in 2005 by New Directions.

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