ISSUE 37 | FEB 2014

FASHION

Illustration by Katie Marshall

the author first became aware of the third Rebecca Volinsky - does that mean you're not Jewish? - err - I'm an artist too - did you think I was a hoax? - you name your baby « Roberta » and then your grandmother « Roberta » dies - do you think your work is in line with the fashion of the times

Abigail Teller

Shapers of Men

how fitting a substance for transubstantiation! - to build his crucifixion, he ruptured and drained the blood vessels of his body donors - this is not a paradox for the Hebrew language - von Hagens' copulating figures have lost both their identities and their privacy - neither Jesus' divinity nor his future as Christ

Matt Nestor

On Becoming a Woman

« don't tell me I did all that treadmilling for nothing » - hissy and bitchy and catty and witty - the cornerstone of your college's genderfuck week - with what relish the boy bats his eyes - size eight, size nine, ten - desire's one thing, competence another - give me three tequila doubles, shave my legs, and land me in a strapless pink thing

Olivia Durif

Unbearable Things, Scary Monsters, & the Problem of Looking

« I'm not cute » - interpreting a poem is a horizontal catcall - attempting to escape gendered meaning - it's not the ocean's fault - a slick and shocking move - drunk off « all the sex there is, » and still die - what is happening to these legs? - the tantrum my silk-scarved body threw

Ray Osborn

On the Exhaustion of Time

left out to gather pain and rainwater - the scoria space of indolent and violent yearning - be it sharp or flat the rule is always to stay - wielding is that which bears eat - their ribald nature, the pew of sex - let's macro-manage that daily duty into a poem - love stayed is a rutile stain - as though emotional money were blue

Pia Peterson

Clothes and Ghosts

this kind of chaos is what they came for - the ol' « we liked it better when it sucked » mentality - a man I love (or any handsome man whom I can imagine loving, really) - more than the leather, the linen, the lace - what looks like but is definitely not dried blood - ironing woven nostalgia

Ezra Glenn

¿es el cenote profundo?

flat, waxed, or rainbow jaguars - all textures want for touch - through a dental dam - opening the door to find someone just as startled on the other side - it was holy gunk anointing me - we were in a polyamorous relationship with the brunette Gabriella - ascend her pyramid, and apologize