Poetry | By Cole Swensen
Effect of noon
To read this poem, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015
To read this poem, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015
To read this poem, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015
To read this essay, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015
To read this story, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015
setting the scene Gloom, gallows. A taste for gothic. Perhaps a butler is creeping behind a hidden wall. The bare branches are spiderwebbed, an eerie light refracted from a dusty looking-glass. This is the hiss in the cellar, the mad mutter in the attic. What soft organ pulses beneath that antique carpet? Graffiti, grist. You …
‘People are actually scared of this movie? I’ll grant that that’s a big dog. Sure. But it’s not like he’s bulletproof. I don’t get what’s so horrific about this.’ ‘The horror has more to do with the like existential betrayal of the situation. The way a pet can turn on you. What can and can’t …
Matthew Clay-Robison: You said to me recently that many of your artist friends wish they were musicians and many of the musicians you know wish they were artists. Whose career would you rather have: Art Spiegelman or Earl Scruggs? Wayne White: Art Spiegelman. Drawing is something that I knew before I wanted to play music. …
I must have peace and this is the only way –suicide note A question of creation: your discovery was ours and ours to despise. Its cries were ours, its fear of burning. You understood how ugly we think we are. If …
Be plucky, foolish, drawn to underwater caverns and other damp lairs. Cry attractively, one hand against your mouth. Wear something diaphanous, and you will probably survive the night, although your lover’s best friend will almost certainly die. Pace, sigh, practice your scream. Raise the alarm when he floats to the surface or lies …
The remedy: anesthesia at the back of the throat, numbness spreading up and out, down and in as your grip on the stem of the glass grows loose like your consonants. The difficulty: to keep a human heart beating, the seeming-simplicity of lifting a creature toward the flashing sky with the turn of a …