The Berlin Wall – David Leo Rice
In The Berlin Wall, the cycle between tragedy and farce spins on, gaining speed as spells of incredible violence are desperately suppressed by the forces of order, only for the boil to begin bubbling against the lid once more.
The Book Censor’s Library – Bothayna Al-Essa
In this world, the internet no longer exists, religion has been reconstituted into state-approved mush, the buildings are all gray slabs, and everyone wears khaki—for the good of the people, of course.
Ōsaki recognizes our fundamental freedom—a freedom that becomes apparent once we accept that we are little more than noisy animals.
Dionysos Speed – Rainer J. Hanshe
In order to make the horror of it all a part of lived experience, Hanshe . . . does not use logic, rhetoric, or story . . . instead, he lets the run-on lines speak about the non-stopness of notifications that surround us.
Glorious People – Sasha Salzmann
History, even personal history, is tidal. Whether we know or don’t know our own histories, we repeat them. Feelings, relationships, and identities recede and advance across generations. There are tragedies, too, and world-historical moments that repeat with numb predictability.
For all its bleak imagery, ATLANTIS is also a poem of beauty and redemption.
What isn’t to be feared in carrying a child and caring for a newborn, when every action has a potential harm? What isn’t to be feared when a newborn child so upends a woman’s very definition of self?
Search Histories – Caitlin Farrugia
SEARCH HISTORIES . . . uses the form of Google searches to explore the contours of the human experience.
then telling be the antidote – Xiao Yue Shan
Xiao Yue Shan looks at once backwards and forwards, superimposing past, present, and future to imagine the speculative possibilities of the future, and the fragile malleability of the past.
You Are the Snake – Juliet Escoria
If the stories in this collection take on a shape, it is one brick laid atop another, the narrator soldiering on beneath the pressure of the pile.