Volume 53, Issue 3 | Winter 2023/24

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Table of Contents

In this issue: the Night Witches, aging backward, cardiologists, Freddie Mercury, family secrets, FreakFest, coyotes, VHS tapes, and more.

POETRY
Janice N. Harrington | Broken Window Theory | The Snuff Tin
John A. Nieves | Drills | This, Plus Ghost Story
Robert Wood Lynn | The Atlantic Ocean Is the Second Biggest Bathroom in the World | God Didn't Exist
John Hodgen | Spit | Snake in a Supermarket
Claire Denson | Social Chameleon
Eliza Gilbert | Self-Portrait as First Death of a War Movie | And Still, There Is a Goblin | The Forethinker
Rae Gouirand | With Paper
Kate Gaskin | Rupture
Richard Haney-Jardine León | piss poor | jonah and the whale | an ode to the extracorporeal oxygenation and onychomycosis and an almost elegy | lifesavers | table for (three) | when the forsythia greens | light bulb
Matthew Minicucci | Normal [Normalis-, Latin] | Suicide [Sui-, Caedere-, Latin]
Michelle Acker | Best Buy
Amanda Smeltz | At Last I Hear My Breath | Night in Gevrey-Chambertin | Party Favors on My Thirty-Sixth Birthday
Stella Wong | dramatic monologue as Laurie Anderson | mona lisa

NONFICTION
Sai Pradhan | Bone on Bone
Jennifer S. Cheng | A Catalog of Falling Things
Ryan Van Meter | An essay about coyotes
Shannon Huffman Polson | A Boy's Cut
Rochelle Goldstein Bay | The Stain

FICTION
Lucas Southworth | The Street, the Ground, a Stone
Tom Howard | Invisibilia
Gracie Newman | Family Video
Geri Modell | FreakFest
Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk | Yonsei
Jennifer Genest | How to Blush in the Afterlife
Brynne Jones | Human Resources
Alex Burchfield | Rifleman

ARTWORK
Carlos Maldonado | Deadwood, acrylic on 10” x 8”cradle board. The painting is one of a limited-palette CMYK nocturne series.

Editor's Note

Over Christmas, my parents reminded me that when I was an angry child, I’d write nasty notes about them on the underside of the furniture: “I hate Mom,” “Dad is mean,” etc. I remember writing something similar on a sheet of notebook paper and stuffing it down into the crack between my bed and the wall, where I believed it would never be found. My parents said they’d have no idea the notes were there—until they moved the furniture, turning the coffee table over and discovering my message. I asked my husband—did you do this too? He did—and he grew into a writer too.

I’m thinking about this editor’s note just before AWP, when a throng of writers will descend upon Kansas City, Missouri, each with their little notebook of secret thoughts. I joke to my husband: I’m going to ask every person who comes by the TIR table—“did you write mean notes to your parents and put them in hidden places?” I like thinking about the beginnings of these writers, the way their impulse formed, what need it satisfied. A little mind-bending to think of this first need: to make thought embodied, thingy; to communicate—but to a non-audience, to the reader under the furniture. An articulation that does not speak, per se.

I hope you find the pieces in this issue characteristic of that exteriorized interior (or interiorized exterior could be as accurate) that writing makes possible. To me, it could be writing’s most essential quality (and a particular feature of poetry, I feel, as a poet, compelled to add). I experience a private charge when I read Janice N. Harrington’s poem “The Snuff Tin,” for example, as I imagine the speaker turning the titular artifact of many generations over in her hands and finding inside it plaits of hair. Or when I encounter Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk’s short story, “Yonsei,” in which we’re given access to the internal family drama we only see when we’re deep in a household’s intimacy. I see the quality, too, in Sai Pradhan’s essay “Bone on Bone,” in the speaker’s quiet resistance to the grating, persistent callousness of the medical establishment and of racist microaggressions. “There’s no more cushion left,” says Pradhan, of her ankle. We’re right there with Pradhan, too, with very little buffer, no varnishing, no whitewashing. It’s fallen out of fashion to say that writing and reading help us flex our empathic muscles. But the mind of another on the page—its intimacy, its confidence—still make me gasp, like a cold plunge. It’s invigorating, no? And good for you. Dive in.

—Katie Berta, Managing Editor

Contributors' Notes

Michelle Acker is a poet, editor, and narrative designer living in Roanoke, Virginia. Her work has been published in the Florida Review, Scoundrel TimeFreezeRay, and elsewhere. Her website is michelleackerwriter.com.

Alex Burchfield grew up in western Montana. His writing has appeared in West Branch, Electric Literature, The Great River Review, and The Washington City Paper. He is the recipient of a Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship from Columbia University, where he currently teaches in the Undergraduate Writing Program.

Jennifer S. Cheng is a poet, essayist, and author of award-winning books, including MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems (Tarpaulin Sky, 2018) and House A (Omnidawn, 2016).

Claire Denson’s work appears in the Cincinnati Review, the Missouri Review, the Massachusetts Review, and Literary Hub, among others. She has received support from Brooklyn Poets, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Michigan.

Kate Gaskin is the author of Forever War (YesYes Books 2020), winner of the Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, the Southern Review, RHINO, and Ploughshares among others.

Jennifer Genest grew up playing in the woods of Sanford, Maine. Her writing has appeared in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and has been noted in Best American Mystery Stories and Best American Essays.

Eliza Gilbert is an undergraduate at Vassar College. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in the Threepenny Review, Frontier Poetry, and others. She was born and raised in New York City.

Rochelle Goldstein Bay is a writer, editor, and teacher living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Nimrod, Columbia Journal, Podium, and Self, among other publications. She was a semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.

Rae Gouirand is the author of eight titles of poetry and nonfiction, including the forthcoming book-length poem The Velvet Book (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She lectures in the Department of English at UC-Davis.

Janice N. Harrington’s latest books of poetry are Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin and, for children, Hurry, Kate, or You’ll Be Late! She teaches at the University of Illinois.

John Hodgen is Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University and Advisory Editor for New Letters. Hodgen won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry for Grace. His book What We May Be is newly out from Lynx House/Washington State University Press.

Tom Howard lives in Arlington, Virginia. His short story collection, Fierce Pretty Things, from Indiana University Press, was the winner of the Blue Light Books Prize in Fiction. He received his MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Shannon Huffman Polson is the author of The Grit Factor, the memoir North of Hope, and a book of essays, The Way the Wild Gets Inside. She writes about women, war, and the natural world.

Brynne Jones is a writer from east Tennessee. She lives in Austin, where she earned her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers.

Born in Venezuela, Richard Haney-Jardine León grew up speaking and writing in Spanish, English, and French. He graduated from Harvard, where he studied with Carlos Fuentes, Helen Vendler, and Seamus Heaney. He subsequently scotched a graduate degree from the Sorbonne. He graduated from Emerson College’s MFA program, winning several awards.

Robert Wood Lynn’s debut collection Mothman Apologia won the Yale Younger Poets Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

Matthew Minicucci is an award-winning author of four collections of poetry, including his most recent, DUAL, from Acre Books. He is an Assistant Professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama.

Carlos Maldonado is an Iowa City-based artist specializing in plein air painting using acrylic and gouache. Since 2019, he has pursued painting full time. His work captures dynamic landscapes and aims to evoke a deep  connection and appreciation for the environment through vibrant colors, high contrast, and light interplay.

Geri Modell was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and now lives in New Jersey, earning her keep as a web content editor. She earned an MFA from Bennington’s Writing Seminars program. Her work has been published in Narrative Magazine, the Audacity, and Four Way Review.

Gracie Newman is a writer from Buffalo, New York. She is currently a fellow in fiction at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, Nimrod, the Adroit Journal, Fugue, and elsewhere.

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as North American Review, Copper Nickel, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and Southern Review. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize.

Sai Pradhan is an Indian American writer and artist who lives in Hong Kong.

Amanda Smeltz is the author of Imperial Bender, her debut poetry collection. She lives in New York City, where she works in the wine industry.

Lucas Southworth’s work has recently appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Southern Review, Conjunctions, AGNI, and Copper Nickel. His collection of short stories, Everyone Here Has a Gun, won the Grace Paley Prize.

Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk is a Japanese American writer, fundraiser, and foodie who grew up in Kāneʻohe, Hawai’i. She is the daughter and descendant of poets, artists, orchard farmers, and beach dwellers. A 2015 and 2018 VONA/Voices alumna and Kundiman Fellow, she lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband and two children.

Ryan Van Meter is the author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now. His work has been selected for anthologies including Best American Essays and Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: 1970 to Present.

Stella Wong is the author of Spooks, winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors Prize, and American Zero, winner of the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Wong’s poems have appeared in POETRY, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and more.

Masthead

Editor
Lynne Nugent

Managing Editor
Katie Berta

Nonfiction Editor
Aaron Pang

Fiction Editor
Noor Qasim
Natalia Zdaniuk

Poetry Editor
Jen Frantz

Editorial Consultants
Michaeljulius Idani, Laura Julier, John Peters

Design & Typesetting
Pocket Knife Press 

Fulfillment Manager
Shannon Yost

Governing Board
Charles D’Ambrosio, Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Melissa Febos, Lois Geist, Loren Glass, Christopher Merrill, Susan Hill Newton, D. K. Nnuro, Roland Racevskis, Jan Weissmiller

Editor Emeritus
David Hamilton

Editorial Assistants
Sunny Ahmed, Alessandra Allen, Ren Arcamone, Renée Bailey, Julián Bañuelos, Caelainn Barr, Hilary Bell, Evana Bodiker, James Braun, Terri Draper, Zea Eanet, Reyumeh Ejue, Georgie Fehringher, Evan Goldstein, Jake Goldwasser, C. J. Green, Kari Gremore, Oso Guardiola, Gyasi Hall, Luke Jorgensen, Rachel Kaufman, Hajrije Kolimja, Juliana Lamy, Mariel Murray, Logan Naylor, H. Thao Nguyen, Grace Oeth, Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe, Hannah Piette, Nick Runyon, Clay Scofield, Delilah Silberman, Jenee Skinner, Alana Solin, Olivia Tonelli, Olivia Tse, Diane Vadino, Julia Wohlstetter, Dan Wriggins, Margaret Yapp, James Zhu