Online Issues
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Capsular, and Excerpts from a Chat with Godbot
Image curtesy of The Public Domain Review
by Christopher Phelps
Capsular
My first thought was that I hoped the openings in the volcanic rock of my life would be something other than spider-infested holes, something other than empty time capsules, each with a note of I’m sorry, time ran out.
My second thought was for the spiders, which I didn’t want to insult. Couldn’t they be relocated to their own traps? Was this a specious logic?
My third thought was that we’re haplessly in charge of this rock,
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It’s Probably for the Best that I Don’t Remember
image curtesy of The Public Domain Review
by Sara Flemington
I pitched a tent on the beach for Jupe. It’d been a while since I’d pitched a tent, but this one was easy, it just popped up. We picked it up from the outlet mall on the way. So now, it’s like we can go anywhere, I told her. Because we can just walk, and when we are tired, stop, pop up our shelter. So, it’s like we are free.
Like wolves, she said.
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3 poems by Saadi Youssef
art by Catherine McGuire
translated from the Iraqi Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Mukalla, Hadramout
A bird calls us to prayer,
as if the clouds here were diaphanous.
A wooden ship hoists its moorings,
its sailors wrapped in sarongs,
their shouts thick in the humid air.
The ambling steps in the women’s bazaar have gone home,
and the Sha’hr harbor melts in the sea’s expanse.
It was dawn, Mihhdar has just finished singing.
Look at how he lies on the cotton rug fast asleep
like a tired child. -
Texts to Sarah across the river
image curtesy of The Public Domain Review
by Jeffrey Skinner
Feeble wind, speak up. I am not the I am. Important to note. Work, for night is coming. And pick up eggs on the way home, pls. About your losses. Have you looked in the space between tic and tock? I lost a few years there, once. FOFL. James Wright taught me rivers. Everyone should call him James, I think. Formal sadness. Wonder if the signal between us is fresh? Kind of mid, maybe? The river’s a slow learner. Churner.
Sometimes the moon,
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Never/Ever
by Laurel Doud and (posthumously) Gregory W. Martin
You died last year after a three-year battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Six months ago your partner sent me your handwritten journal from 1973, her note reading: Greg put this in the box with his important papers. He wanted you to have it.
The journal was from the first months of our courtship.
I never knew such a thing existed.
In 1973, you were 26, newly divorced,
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The Squimbop Condition: An Interview with David Leo Rice on his Latest Novel
by Isabel Piazza Risi
In The Squimbop Condition, the newest novel from David Leo Rice, the New School alumnus crafts a surreal story of myth, madness, and an everlasting quest.
While first ideated as a series of interconnected short stories, The Squimbop Condition threads together years of writing into a complete fable-like narrative. The novel follows two brothers, Jim and Joe Squimbop, as they slip and slide through time, realities, and history. From Hollywood to Europe to Dodge City and all around the globe, the bizarre duo reshape reality in their endless mission to bring about the Golden Age in this sometimes-slapstick,
