by bart plantenga with Mark Boswell

~

“The house turned out to be a magnet for objects, where things were valued for their peculiarity, instead of being consumed.”1

^{₁ Adilkno, Cracking the Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media, Autonomedia, 1994. Adilkno (Dutch: BILWET), Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge, was established in Amsterdam in 1983. https://thing.desk.nl/bilwet/Cracking/squatting.html.}

[Osnabrück,

art by Jean Wolff

by Chekwube Danladi

Painkiller

I was only meant to be in Lagos for one week, staying in an American hotel in Ikoyi

overlooking the lagoon. I was there to read poetry and teach a writing workshop on decolonizing

poetics at the British Council, no order to the chaos of the irony. And otherwise order in jollof

and pizza while avoiding any local probing aunties. Swim, cigarette, and Irish stout in the hotel

pool after dark.

art by Virgil Suárez 

by Taylor Sykes

Knox

We take Route 231 that day to a nowhere town an hour away. We’d heard it was something to do in the summer when there was nothing to do in the summer. She says, “I don’t think I’ll do it but I’ll watch you.” And I say, “You better get this shit on tape. I want a record of my recklessness.” Just another corn town on a yawn of flat road where country kids go when they’re bored. Go looking for a gravel road near a bridge where no trains pass.

art by Stephen Ground

by Shana Ritter

The street is sheen heat flickers 
off the sidewalks, we skip 
to avoid cracks not wanting 
to break any backs. Shouts
of ringolevio, echo off brick 
squat six story buildings.

In the shade girls doubledutch chanting 
I know something I won’t tell 
three little monkeys in a peanut shell
on the corner another group surrounds
one girl bouncing a Spalding, singing
A my name is Alice and, raises her legs 
above the ball back and forth 
in graceful arcs through the alphabet.

art by Suzana Stojanović

by Marushka Rose Grogan

art by Andrew Velazquez

by Courtney Hitson

The Fort Lauderdale Air Show’s slated to start in 13 minutes. A mom, almost not-frowning, poses sculptures of fruit: her striated shell of a hollowed watermelon becomes a shark’s gaping maw stuffed with grapes. A pineapple turns to an owl, complete with cross-sectioned, orange-slices of eyes and leaves divvied into flanks. Teenagers selfie their faces into whimsical pouts, as if yard gnomes flirting with sentience. Adorable and invasive parakeets spectate the scene from a perimeter of unlit tiki torches. They are gossipy rascals,