Spring 2023
Poetry
​
Sunrise, Late Winter by L. Ward Abel
Concrete by Alicia Byrne Keane
Niels Bohr by Harrison Fisher
When the World at Large Makes You Feel
​by Amy Gordon
Four by Jessica E. Johnson
Two by Jimmy Lo
Nausea by Elizabeth Loudon
Two by Rebecca Macijeski
Writing Biography by Janet McCann
​Three by Daniel Nemo
Picking Blueberries by Rosanna Oh
Three by Eric Pankey
Distichs by Frederick Pollack
Two by Ken Poyner
Five by Eleni Sikelianos

Translations
​
To Breathe Words in the Woods by Jila Mossaed
(transl. Brad Harmon)
Three by Marin Sorescu (transl. Daniel Nemo)
Four by Marjolijn van Heemstra (transl. Rosalind Buck)

​Fiction

Anoptics by Shifra Steinberg
Interviews

Borges: A Character by Borges
by Marin Sorescu

Reaching for Meaning: Rediscovering the World as a Way of Finding Ourselves
in conversation with Anna Badkhen

The Human Mind Is Its Own World
in conversation with Rosanna Oh

From Mirror Stage to Creative Identity
in conversation with Shifra Steinberg
by Katherine G. Bergman and Daniel Nemo 

Khashayar Mohammadi’s Moe’s Skin and Persian feminist activism in Toronto
by Terry Trowbridge

​Essays

Acts of Humanity by Anna Badkhen

Fine Arts

​Sketches by Staffan Gnosspelius

Borges:    A    Character    by    Borges
in conversation with Marin Sorescu 

An interview never before translated into English
Romanian poet and playwright Marin Sorescu talks to the great Jorge Luis Borges about poetry and science as means of orientation in the labyrinth that is the world. 
Read the full interview

Rediscovering   the   World   as   a   Way   of   Finding   Ourselves
in conversation with Anna Badkhen

Anna Badkhen on how seeing the world requires us to look inward, and her attempt at finding the right questions over the correct answers.
Read the full interview

​Five
by Eleni Sikelianos

​If you were a child / standing on the grass holding an ice cube in your hand / and your hand was warm, was warming / or if you were the earth holding an iceberg in your belly / the bathing veins feeding the heart ...
​
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​To    Breathe    Words    in    the    Woods
by Jila Mossaed
​(translated from the Swedish by Brad Harmon)

​My language is not that of ice / my language is of sand and flame / my language / is a whisper from strong roots / giving life to the great trees of the desert ...

Read more

​Four
by Marjolijn van Heemstra
​​(translated from the Dutch by Rosalind Buck)

​My first made it no further than a small / cardboard box, too wet for a grave. The doctor / indicated approximately the head, a ridiculous / beginning, a pinprick, there was no person there / to be seen ...
Read more

Three
​by Marin Sorescu
​(translated from the Romanian by Daniel Nemo)

​​Let's kill ourselves, I say to my friends, / We communicated so well today, / Got so deep, / We’ll never reach / That kind of joint perfection again / And it’d be a shame to waste the opportunity ...
Read more

​Picking    Blueberries
by Rosanna Oh

​It was a risk my father had taken in midwinter: / ordering 240 pint boxes of blueberries / in less than desirable condition at a discount / so they could be repicked, repacked, and resold ...
Read more

Focus    on    . . .

Staffan    Gnosspelius

An exclusive look at Staffan Gnosspelius' fascinating sketches where the idea for his latest picture book, bear, first appeared. 
Discover

Acts   of    Humanity
by Anna Badkhen

​The word “map” entered the English language in the sixteenth century via the French from the Medieval Latin mappa mundi, map of the world ...
​
Read more

Three 
by Daniel Nemo

​Lately I see things / fade to a dark shade / till they wear through / their own orbit. / What strikes my eye / is an altercation of fluency. / Part concomitance / of form. Part vacuum / that sucks me in ...
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Two 
by Jimmy Lo

​taking off my coat, / my "care of place," someone / said. I hear the roar / of a thousand-thousand places / being stripped like / the blank time in between ...
Read more

Concrete
by Alicia Byrne Keane

​So you take some symbol, like / the overcoat       the pockets / an obscure tangle of thread & air / so any weight dropped there went right / to the lining ...
Read more

Four 
by Jessica E. Johnson

On a hill / where someone planted you: / needles skyward / sensate iterations of self / open to a too-gray heaven ...
Read more

Niels    Bohr
by Harrison Fisher

​​is quoted as once saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially / about the future,” some real comedic talent in evidence here ...
Read more

Anoptics
by Shifra Steinberg

A small-town optician becomes entirely absorbed in his latest vision-altering creation, which leads him to question the very existence of objective reality.
Read the short story

Three
by Eric Pankey

​The canyon walls’ striations / Wrought by water, by wind, / Reveal deviations / In the parallel of lines. / : : / How to integrate the minutiae— / The febrile marks, a torn web ...
Read more

The   Human   Mind   Is   Its   Own   World
in conversation with Rosanna Oh

Rosanna Oh on her experience as a first-generation Korean American woman, finding her path to poetry, and publishing her new book The Corrected Version.
Read the full interview

From    Mirror    Stage    to    Creative    Identity
in conversation with Shifra Steinberg

Shifra Steinberg talks to Katherine G. Bergman and Daniel Nemo about her influences and Imaginary Order, her stunning debut novel. ​
Read the full interview

Two
by Rebecca Macijeski

​When he was born, he could already play. / Music, like time and space, was in his blood. / He only had to wait for his body to catch up / to what was flowing inside. / It happened like this ...
​
Read more

Two 
by Ken Poyner

​The authorities are confiscating clocks. They debate mother’s egg timer, finally taking it. For clocks set into architecture, they take the hands, come back to etch out the faces ...
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When    the    World    at    Large    Makes    You    Feel
by Amy Gordon

​afraid, as if any moment you might fall through / the thin glaze you’re skating on, you hold / your breath, as if balloons in your chest / could prevent the worst, until one day, a crack ...
Read more

Khashayar    Mohammadi’s    Moe’s    Skin    and    Persian    feminist    activism    in    Toronto
by Terry Trowbridge

Terry Trowbridge recounts his encounter with poet, translator, and photographer Khashayar Mohammadi about their chapbook Moe’s Skin, and how mixing Iranian and Western cultures, embracing one’s sexual identity, and exploring a new kind of art became the driving force for the work of a new generation of Persian writers.
Read the interview-essay

Sunrise,    Late    Winter
by L. Ward Abel

​About halfway past seven just as / the northeast sky lit up orange / from waters aloft / I looked right and, distracted, / thought of all those million souls / then flying in waves / towards Carolina ...
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Nausea
by Elizabeth Loudon

​Even when I fainted on the dockside / I wanted to do it with grace – / a limp swan folding its wings among reeds. / I remembered my kin who long ago / sailed this way, all plunder and panic ...
Read more

Writing    Biography
by Janet McCann

​So good to lose oneself / in someone else— / rewrite her to fit. / I see myself / on that doorstep in Austria. / Heavy wooden door. / Bronze lion knocker, or is it a griffin? ...
Read more

Distichs
by Frederick Pollack

​Life is the model for a poem, even the subtlest; / for life ignores death, as a poem ignores logic. / If they say your studies are a waste of time, / tell them you’re taking a bite from it ...
Read more

F  E  A  T  U  R  E  D