Narwhals, Salt and Fractals
Using photography as a point of departure, Christine Nguyen cuts, layers, draws, sprays and crystallizes, making both objects and works on paper that revel in a sense of discovery.
The Visible Boy
“in the book as I remember it is surrounded by / parentheses / The illustrator / keeps him moving black / Parentheses like as if his brown skin struck / black / Sparks on the air with every step.” Shane McCrae‘s recollection of a 1940s children’s book reanimates the terrible power of its depictions and their violent persistence in memory and beyond.
Soft Power
“Your pupils widen on all / Adra prison will swallow. / Wives rock, fingering their beads.” While her husband observes political trials in Syria, V. Penelope Pelizzon wanders “the republic of poetry,” seeking language to account for their encounters there.
The Big Father Essay
“Whenever I peeked into his room at night, there he lay, open-mouthed, those frightening white feet kicked free of sheets.” Inspired by Joe Brainard, Jeff Oaks invents a form for generating truths.
Manuel Cosentino
Manuel Cosentino talks with Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching about the big skies in his Behind a Little House series of photographs, which has captured the imagination of audiences across the globe.
Priya Kambli
Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching talk with Priya Kambli about the story behind the Kitchen Gods series.
from The Woman With No Name
“How to cull the fuckery that follows a woman who does as she wants?” Michael Luis Dauro‘s female gunslinger chases the fantasy of violence and revels in the history-heavy liberty of words.
from Floodstrains
“Days before death he was surprised by it,” writes David Micah Greenberg in this elegy keyed to compositions for solo piano, summoning awe “As we imagine the departed / hearing music we now hear…. As some light will never reach us.”
The Sea Palaces
“Before Liberation, emperors had idled there, among pleasure grounds of lakes and pavilions, and it was said you couldn’t look directly into its gates or your vision would blur.” Third Daughter is recruited for a ballroom dance troupe at the home of the Chairman in this excerpt from Vanessa Hua’s novel-in-progress.
Cul-de-sac
“In their baskets, they carry / small tokens of privilege that they barter / for magic beans, freedom // from our protection, from our / spurned friendship with the world.” Patty Seyburn’s neighborhood tour takes in six houses, plenty of fear and a seemingly endless appetite for more.
Terrestrial Transmissions
Tuning to the role of the feminine in science fictions, Lydia Moyer curated Terrestrial Transmissions, an exhibition featuring video work by six artists, all women, broadcasting here.
Commute
“The writing’s on the wall, lit morning and night.” Rattling through Philadelphia’s subterranean corridors, “haul[ing] a bagful of anthologies from place to place,” a teacher grapples at a culture that will not lift. By Sebastian Agudelo.
Angel
“Love / Is quick and murderous, bleeding // Proof of talent,” writes Jericho Brown in this tender and terrifying poem about our violent legacies of gender and sex.
Jim Naughten
Jim Naughten talks with Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching about his vision and the process behind the making of Conflict and Costume, his new series depicting the Herero people of Namibia.
Famous Men, Real and Imagined
In an excerpt from Mr. West, Sarah Blake treats Kanye as subject, muse and audience, while Jill McDonough‘s “Oh, James!” makes 007 into an icon of his many eras.