The canvas hung askew. Thickly coated in acrylic, the painting bore the abstract depiction of a chair, singular and empty, in a room of three distorted walls. I didn’t recognize the painting, nor did I particularly care for it, but I appreciated the expressionist approach.
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Laurels by Tara A. Elliott
"...arms now/ berry-covered branch/ —how awfully/ they must ache."
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A Normal Interview with Myriam Gurba by Monique Quintana
A Gothic style is ideal for narrating the conquest of the West because it’s a horror story that continues to unfold. Horror tropes that have their roots in the Gothic are ideal mechanisms for that type of narrative.
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The Antipodal Point of Fear by David H Weinberger
After discovering antipodal points and remembering Australia, I immediately started digging. It made no sense to believe that I could dig through the core of the earth but it didn’t make any sense to live the way me and my family, my neighbors, were living: threatened and afraid all the time.
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MISCELLANEOUS GRIEVANCES by Ji Hyun Joo
My doppelgänger smells like wet fur and Old Spice. Even when we’re sitting in the dry air conditioning of my Jeep Cherokee, the scent — heavy with notes of yeast and nutmeg — is overpowering.
Read MorePulp Poem by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer
Mirror, mirror on the wall / Look down in mercy / The wheel is fixed / In a lonely place
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Will We Hear it Coming? by Amy Benson
I adopted my father’s fears, but the fear on tap at church spoke to what felt like my native suspicions—that harm was gestating in me in the shadow of an inevitable but unpredictable cataclysm. I learned to be in constant fear of my thoughts, lest something unforgivable dash across them at the very moment of the apocalypse.
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Margo Price Macro Doses by Joe Bonomo
Price is a difficult artist to box-up, for those so inclined. She’s lived in Nashville, Tennessee for decades, and has both courted and been denied Music City’s trappings. A dynamic study in contrasts, she grew up in rural Illinois but sings with a southern accent; her debut album was released on maverick Jack White’s Third Man Records, hardly a Nashville industry staple (though it may be on its way); she cut a live album at historic and revered Ryman Auditorium, waltzing (and rocking) within a storied tradition.
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Two Poems by Laura S. Marshall
"The doctors call me ugly,/ draw over my bone structure,/ trace the routes where the/ coral will fuse."
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Sleepless by Ann Hood
“But here was evidence that maybe, if this ever did happen, I wouldn’t be able to scream or run out the door. That something—fear, disbelief, paralysis—might keep me right there, in place.”
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Moms by Marguerite Alley
A few times, he reached for her breast, but the moment his fingers collided with the skin of her chest she involuntarily felt herself disengage in surprise, as though shocked that this should be a place his hand might be inclined to rest, to explore
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Henrietta by Dan Shields
Scuttling toward me with the fat pink knuckles of her claws, assembled inside the shell I’d just thrown. Her body at home in the ugliness I’d created. She was my best friend instantly. I named her Henrietta.
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The Plague of Lice by Julie Marie Wade
Lousy: a permissible way to express displeasure, even contempt, without resorting to the verboten profane. Profanity, after all, could get you sent to your room, your mouth scrubbed out with soap, or worse if the Lord’s name was taken in vain. But lousy had a strange twist to it, a little corkscrew in the language that opened a different bottle.
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A 1993 ZR1 Spyder by Rachel Sudbeck
The hotel where I worked saw a pilgrimage then of portly old men with mustaches and cabbie hats, their stomachs tucked into ill-fit jeans. They came into the lobby weeping, clutching at their thinning hair like the oracle at Delphi, asking God or me or whoever else was in the room why this had to happen to those beautiful machines.
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Two Poems by Jane Zwart
"My dad is not making it up, but art cannot/ leave freak beauties be. He will have to add more—/ a plastic bag snagged on a sapling’s ankle—"
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A Normal Interview with Ghassan Zeineddine by Lena Mubsutina
I have always loved creating different kinds of characters from various generations, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic classes. I think it’s just a matter of doing those characters justice and treating them with empathy and compassion.
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Pregnancy, Art, and Censorship by Sarah Dalton
To the best of my knowledge, unless you include women’s private photo albums or personal social media feeds, there is no Madonna with Gestational Diabetes, Madonna of the Amniocentesis, or Madonna of the IV Tower and Labor and Delivery Room. I feel kinship with these images that portray the complexities of being pregnant. They challenge the demands for silence and censorship around experiences that do not follow the prescribed, imposed narrative of a joyful and celebratory pregnancy. These images revolve around loss, distress, powerlessness, a beauty often called grotesque, and, despite all its astonishing advances, a medical system that sometimes leaves more questions than answers.
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Three Poems by Mykki Rios
"how do you play hand games with ghosts/ expect souls to hopscotch the river styx/ let favorite toys become grave markers"
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Pusha Man by Evan Massey
“Breathe, dawg,” I declare to one hand-length worm. Because I want everyone and everything I love to breathe.
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Reflection in the Waiting Room of the Dermatology Clinic by Lucas Jorgensen
"the only one/ whose shore has shifted, flesh expanding from one bone/ to the next. A jagged coast…"
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