Straight from the worn-down streets of Atlantic Avenue comes a new entry in the chronicles of the abyss. Touching on madness, drug use, sex and arrest, Call of the Void, a new magazine of both word and art, is a comely volume of despair and heartbreak, unbridled joy and the ecstatic. It features some contributors to Full Stop, but represents its own take on this strange experience we call reality.
Call of the Void features —
The inane, yet somehow deeply profound poetry of Owen Campbell:
Tell my father
If I die
It was drunk
with a hookerNot a rectal prolapse
while reading a book
A tale of no fortune, no fame, and no future by John Farley:
For the past three years I had lived in a large plant-filled loft above a tire shop on Atlantic Avenue, an industrial strip gouged of breath beneath the screeching Long Island Railroad. The neighborhood is home to West Indians and Hasidic Jews, and while the streets surrounding mine were lined with big 19th century brownstones, the primary residents of Atlantic Avenue were thousands of homeless people who lived either in the shelter two blocks away, under the bridge or down in the alleys. To get to the nearest subway meant walking through a gauntlet of souls sparing for change 24 hours a day fucked up on Spice. I liked this apartment. There was a backdoor that lead to a sprawling roof surrounded by pine trees where you could even see stars on cloudless nights. It was nice to lay out on that roof when things got bad, and at this time in my life things had never been worse.
A trip to the emergency room with Kalan Sherrard:
It’s been a strange and very exciting couple of days. I showed up at the West India Day Parade at Grand Army Plaza early Monday morning and began dancing down Flatbush with the Parade, gathering objects and drinks strewn about on the street (a wonderful little stroller i wrapped in Antillean flags and braziers, bracelets etc) and was having a phenomenal time. I dont remember drinking very much, but do remember a distinctly chemical taste to one of the half-full homemade Jamaican whiskies I picked up. The day dawned. I have no recollection of the next ten hours.
Featuring artwork by Eliza Koch, Deb Berman, and Jonathan Rosen, Call of The Void is for sale at callofthevoid.org.
If you’d like to hear from some of the authors, and get a chance to buy the magazine in person, the release party will be held on December 11th, in Brooklyn, New York. More details can be found here.
This post may contain affiliate links.
