ISSUE 47 | DEC 2014

NOCTURNE

Illustration by Antonia Stringer.

but her hug was at least Midwestern - like a hand softly laid across my forehead - it was rush hour traffic jams, it was a cool cat strutting - I am standing by the grave with a thick-handled shovel - The prize for winning is immortality. - « You know the story of the Golem? » - shielding himself from the swimming dust motes with a forearm - The secret lay in the codas.

Hannah Clark

Parasomnia

a hive of snorting, mumbling and locomotive bodies - to shift her mucosal reeds out of their whistling orientation - a genetic disorder called Fatal Familial Insomnia - he memorized strings of numbers and would recite them - red-eyed and barefoot wearing only pajamas - I was too ashamed to look at her - waking up in the tank to a roar of hallucinations - the chaotic spread of shadows cast in low lighting - it is they who have disappeared

Matthew Pellegrino

Ethic of Vulnerability

violence and exposure - stupefied by the event - in the junction - the image of the causa sui - tourism - technology and precarity - an affective community of the living - social barbarism - solstice

Ethan Linck

Black Coffee

« Mountain Mocha—they’ve got the most beautiful women in all of Sandy » - you don't really know who is doing the drinking - and as we start to desire coffee and those stubbled men - In between hourly circuits of our thin and wispy nets - I felt bashful, and left the creamer alone - proselytizers and disciples, snobs and unapologetic pleasure seekers - their own bearded biologist - the far right end of the fussy / unfussy axis

Joshua Schwartz

Vigilant

the great Kabbalist R. Abraham ha-Levi Berukhim - following the expulsions - the Infinite/Nothing (Ein Sof/Ayin) - G?d contracted G?dself, creating an empty void - Vigils replete with keening - the Kabbalists of sixteenth-century Safed - Do not, as some do, even utter the words, il diablo - Happy is the lot who joins Her - O you who linger in the garden, lovers are listening; let me hear your voice

Piper Wheeler

An Untitled Poem by Osip Mandelshtam

arches kept quiet - hurricane sang - green and brown / but always young - black wine - thrush-filled lindens

Matt Longabucco

Vigil (4)

lapse and labor - though what isn’t - large environments sicken - there isn’t a script - scarab of 6th street—journeys - I’ve been home / a lot

Élan Reisner, Michael Kinnucan

Dear Hypocrite: An Advice Column

Why are you jealous? - Let's talk about crutches. - Is that a problem? If so, why, and for whom? - a supermarket which also sells therapy and used cars - bad council can come at the right time - recklessness (fearing too little) - self-conscious, unattractive, feminine - museums, bakeries, all the usual places I go to alone