Category: Issue 27

ISSUE 27

ISSUE 27 POETRY TWO POEMS by Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky THE POINT OF ARTICULATION by Car Simione TWO POEMS by Sophia Terazawa TWO POEMS by Kuhu Joshi SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE CORNFIELDS by Carolina Hotchandani TWO POEMS by Daniele Pantano TWO POEMS by Lucas Jorgensen FICTION DOG by Jade Song NONFICTION ASUNCION FEVER by Beverly Burch TRANSLATION A FLOWER THAT REFUSES TO BE POETRY by Kim Hyesoon,…
TWO POEMS by Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky

Severn, Maryland pink mouths of crepe myrtle mouthing words like çay demle kızım and a sloped garden in the back and a creaking deck and a bookshelf full of religious texts and my bedroom in robin blue and hairbands always lost under couch cushions and prayer rug facing the direction it’s supposed to face and…
THE POINT OF ARTICULATION by Car Simione

To prepare for the apocalypse, I practice looking in the mirror. I kiss myself on the mouth. I practice hopping on one foot, but the eventual sight of you nosing among the lilacs nearly topples me, so I excavate the marketplace and poll the dignified masses in their plaid coats. They ask for more time. Despite my ministrations, the flowers keep dying.…
TWO POEMS by Sophia Terazawa

Residual These syllables strike our lower register [branching: fog]. Who whispers like a friend, “Bêche-de-mer,” I wring out towels and pillow cases. Sunday afternoon. Check on your sister, you sign. She won’t speak anymore. Glass trees. Soapstone box. You package her father’s old shirt there in Queens [arms crossed…
TWO POEMS by Kuhu Joshi

Saraswati on a Sunday morning All this living alone. This mug With my initials on it, scrubbed And put to dry On the kitchen slab. It waits for me. Looks happiest when filled up. I’m a bit sick of Maria – my Areca palm There by the bookshelf. She Dances. When it gets like this I Don’t know what to do with myself. Fridge then…
SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE CORNFIELDS by Carolina Hotchandani

I am a citizen of a former British colony that rebelled from England with a great tea party, declaring itself its motherland one day. America. Was it orphaned? Did it kill its own mother? Poor England. Where are you from? the other Americans ask me. My mother is Brazilian; my father is Indian. I was…
TWO POEMS by Daniele Pantano

CORRUPTED (WASTEWATER) We ask to be made too . . . short and bleeding to be . . . strangled with candy floss . . . to taste what it takes . . . to reach another to be absolutely . . . nothing but spoken about . . . to spell innocence or renewal…
TWO POEMS by Lucas Jorgensen

The Bureau of Consumption It’s the warmest day of the year so far in Brooklyn, where I confess I have done a bad thing quietly. The self-storage center, a jolly roger, glints with a novel kind of light. Last night, I had a green potato and didn’t die. Today, I had another. Off the R…
DOG by Jade Song

Taihu’s dense clouds roll along its shores like mini roiling hurricanes, their unfriendly eyes trained on Sengru, who hops nimbly from one flat stone to the next, his own eyes scrutinizing the ground, searching for gongshi. Visibility along the lake is poor today, but he is intimate with these paths, could even leap the rocky…
ASUNCION FEVER by Beverly Burch

Asuncion Fever: Anxiety, Euphoria, Secrecy, Travesty, and Lost Culture A twenty-four-hour flight—Miami, Sao Paulo, Asuncion—a decrepit taxi, a tired lawyer, an office far south, these are the beginning of what I remember. It was the unstoppable hunger some women feel, desire for a baby, that took us to Paraguay to begin a weeks-long adoption process. Asuncion…
A FLOWER THAT REFUSES TO BE POETRY by Kim Hyesoon trans. Cindy Juyoung Ok

Anything too cold does not become poetry Anything too hot is not poetrySoaking your feet in boiling water does not bring out poetry Lying on the ice with eyes wide open does not bring out poetry That day no one wrote poetryThey just made a call Secretly picked up the receiver Blew and sent off poetry—Did they wear new clothes? —No, just took off their old…
TWO POEMS by Abdourahman Waberi trans. Nancy Naomi Carlson

Sahel! Sa(y) Hel(lo) Mother earth Earth mother We have fallen to earth The man from Galilee keeps mum A surge in perils, tsunamis The gods are seeing red The Sahel rises in you, in me The Red Sea boils in you, in me Nunavut is melting in you, in me No taller than a pygmy,…