ISSUE 77 | JUL 2017

BLACK AND BLUE

Image by Leah Gallant

it is impossible to gauge the contours of an object coated in Vantablack - green forever but not necessarily the greenest green at a particular point in time - puncture the soft belly of language - Vantablack is the Splenda of blacks, a god among men - the darkest unblack color seems like it should be a blue so deep it edges into purple - both by hand and by having naked women roll around in it - through Google Maps I maintain virtual access to the place of its manufacture - COCKLES MUSSELS WHELKS JELLIED EELS PRAWNS - maybe it is where the scientists live

James Meador

Dank Lexeme Stash: Tungusic Ideophones

most languages in the family are already extinct or moribund - Tungusic languages are rich in ideophones - chimcharam, growing fainter with distance - cofok-cofok, deer buck hoof step - chige-lebele, urinating - shuwar, sword drawn from scabbard; snake moving rapidly; arrow in flight - khaonk, losing consciousness - whether you write a word with spray paint on a wall, say it out loud, or read it on a screen - I don't see a principled way to link the remaining sound images and ideational/sensory content

Ben W. Fletcher

Tortured Time

the dammed course is no longer continuous - the past is lost in a more total and more novel way - nostalgia soothes the scars of a disjunctive transition - Galician Jew, alcoholic exile, troubled journalist, prolific novelist - now, houses disappear and new ones appear immediately - Habsburg time - trauma’s transformative power over narrative

Christina Martin

Learning Breath Awareness Controls Fear

my 80 year-old cardiac patient with a history of increasingly frequent syncope - an inpatient psych hospital on a locked unit - the talk turns to football - he tells me that I am beautiful like a model and that the other patients are ugly - red bumps arranged in the little straight lines that are the hallmark of scabies - Arthur closes his eyes

Dominick Lawton

Dear Hypocrite: An Advice Column

which I'm not judging but Independence Day with no beer seems just wrong - they pull their daughter away nervously - (he is perfectly healthy) - why aren't they more chill? - what kind of deferred class anxiety must be fueling this? - Slavoj Žižek, himself a notorious weirdo - sociality mediates the unease inherent in sharing close spaces with (unchosen) others - hide the wine