ISSUE 31 | AUG 2013

STRATEGIES OF TOGETHERNESS

Illustration by Antonia Stringer

Caroline Lemak Brickman

The Merry and Merciless Series: Versions of “You”

hoping that a less literal translation would be more faithful - i’ve fallen in love with you tirelessly - hot as hell and careful - has anyone ever wanted so much? - glimpses of early quicksilver & storm - waxing while i wax glorious - i swore i wouldn’t leave a trail of blood - k i know what you feel like from the inside too

Ethan Linck

On Singing

at the end of a long rutted dirt road in Yakima Indian Reservation - there is a romance to the Colorado Plateau - struggle, iron, volcanoes - the ecocentric canon - Abbey had women problems, and so did I - I remember him in wild, grand places - canyons are a vulvic answer to the peaks - a vein of dirt in the slickrock badlands beyond the RVs and mountain bikers

Avi Garelick

On Incest: Its Whys and Why Nots

what is wrong with incest - people who think Freud’s ideas are icky - did he commit a crime - the identity between natural (selection) and natural (aversion) - Maimonides describes a divine law - your mother, sister, or a beast - the primary function of revelation is political - she is your mother!

Sara Pheasant

Of Traps and Trolling: Brain Melt in the Digital Future

she smiles, winks, and uncrosses her legs to accidentally reveal her penis - no one « likes » each other on 4Chan - their economy finds its quintessential form in The Game - tits or GTFO - newfag, oldfag, animefag, straightfag, gayfag - a space of « illuminated relationality » - barebacking is a means of shattering the self to let others in

John West

Generation X-Men

he was a Republican back then - the almost masturbatory sense we get when Peter Parker (Spider Man) first discovers his talents - but the X-Men is also a team book - Grey / Phoenix takes off Cyclops’s glasses - this is the dual nature of self-discovery - now, my brother is twitter-famous - siblings seek separation (and often worse)

Olivia Durif

In the Kitchen

a pleasure both solitary and generous - different from heartbreak, bigger almost - what if I keep falling in love with my friends - « eating for » a person - starving is obviously a simpler route - her macchiato instead of my black drip - look at me out here, doing so well without you - I’m already homesick for the woman I’m watching cook

Michael Kinnucan

Hunger Games

children are the strangest of strangers - let’s pretend aces are high - his mother and Freud were in agreement - if real separation is painful, why is it repeated with pleasure - « I too can make this baby disappear » - what can the child trade for power - mirrors aren’t the only way to play this game - the strangest kind of war

Matthew Goldin

Cults, Schmaltz, and Gestalts: The Canon of Everyday Life

highly unlikely that R. Kelly’s « Remix to Ignition » will become the next book in the New Testament - too much stress and Kierkegaard - Frank Herbert was a better writer than most 13-year-old fanfiction writers - if I decide to save Bambi’s mother’s life - a creative writing club I’d made on my Neopets account - this is gospel

Eric M Gurevitch

Kālidāsa’s Meghadhūta, or, the Story of a Yakṣa Slacking on the Job

everything the Yakṣa touches is sexualized - two « heres » at once - nature as perfected, not distorted - I find myself falling into the rhythms of separation (viraha) - traditional Sanskrit literary critics - fundamentally a poem of « secular » love - as she laughs, showing her teeth, her white foam - he cannot even join me in a dream

Clement Alexander

Notes on Shallows and Honesty

unless it’s always like this - an extremely stressful proposition - but I still don’t know what makes people into what they later are - I couldn’t believe in fashion without objectifying people, and I believe in fashion - the fear of being misperceived shades into a fear of being perceived at all - I don’t mean that this is all a bad thing, this screen