Cigarettes Until Tomorrow: Romanian Poetry
It is normal to mourn a dying planet, it is common to feel isolated and embittered in this new era, but the true loss would be to accept such disaffection, to not fight for a better tomorrow.
Yard Show – Janice N. Harrington
The Black yard show is in dialogue with the Middle American landscape; the padlocked garden and the pockmarked prairie blur each other’s boundaries.
Characters, like Lim’s stylistic choices, shift and transform . . . The novel suggests identity is a beguiling, perhaps not even achievable thing: just mirror, marriage, and mirage.
Mahato’s poetic attention interacts with ideas and observations about community and climate, and the spaces in her language are literally filled in with color.
Cuckoo – Gretchen Felker-Martin
While drugs and very vaguely defined anti-social behavior were often cited as the cause for warehousing kids in violent dormitories, queer youth experienced an added layer of horror, often sent here as part of aggressive “conversion therapies” . . .
Vague Predictions and Prophecies – Daisuke Shen
In Daisuke Shen’s short story collection . . . characters don’t make choices, exactly. They rebound and ricochet like sentient pinballs, plunged into a psychotic god’s arcade game.
Low: Notes on Art and Trash – Jaydra Johnson
Most of our social processes involving trash are designed to remove it from consciousness: out of sight, out of mind. Johnson’s goal is the opposite. She aims to spur a renewed awareness of trash.
Coming Out Like a Porn Star – ed. Jiz Lee
The declaration that “sex sells” is not to be taken lightly at all—nor the labor of the industry’s workers.
Queer Palestine – Pinko Collective
Small but immensely valuable, Queer Palestine dispenses with dangerous narratives about sexuality in Palestine while shining a light on the everyday forms of queer life and anticolonial politics that persist against all odds.
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear – Mosab Abu Toha
This collection echoes the despair, resilience, and righteous anger felt in Palestine. Toha writes with simple syntax and diction, weaving in metaphors and unsaid emotions that cry out loud and clearly.