ISSUE 35 | DEC 2013

DYNAMITE

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Illustration by Katie Marshall

Sam Feldman

Explosive Liability: The Legal Politics of Dynamite in Industrial-Age America

a species of civil wrongs - radical departures from the older laws - absolute right to be undisturbed - it turns out you haven’t been harmed after all - damnum absque injuria - both abnormally dangerous and absolutely necessary - destruction caused by an exploding steam boiler - « They are demanded by the manifold wants of mankind » - Tree fragments flew everywhere - Of all the ancient English legal concepts to perpetuate - their marvelous machines

Matthew J.X. Doyle

黒い 火 (Black Fire)

tungsten carbide and steel shell - tears clouded over the viewfinder - « they may expect a rain of ruin from the air » - 300,000 degrees centigrade - the object’s shadow will be flash burned - a shadow is long when the sun is setting - resembles death without being death - photogenic

Lia Friedman

Plots, Puppets, and Petersburg

« their secret and demeaning stature in society » - Bread and Puppet - Andrei Bely’s Petersburg (1913, revised 1922 [!]) - masked balls, go-betweens, and drawing room scenes - the beautiful might no longer signify the good - unmotivated terror - coulrophobia - it isn’t the gods - they bungle nearly everything

Sam Dean

Kieselguhr’s Kid

anyone with legs was jumping at silver and gold - Kaboom! There goes a railroad bridge - some said he could blast a bullet coming at him straight back - « Death Specials » - the sick echo of a retail pricetag - more like a sarcastic hereditary title - being murdered for not wanting to be murdered a different way - dynamite, left to sit, separates like salad dressing

Odelia Kaly

An Open Letter to the Department of Education

She didn’t know it yet, but she was quite unhappy - if every piece of paper documenting her supposed success were to be incinerated - overwhelming, wave-like, all-encompassing lie - your brain is a mismatched circuit board - Half the police department is stalking the hallways - A chasm grows and swells, that’s what happens - harmful and harmed, poisoned and poisonous