Reviews

No Way in the Skin without This Bloody Embrace – Jean D’Amérique

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. . . like something out of Ŝvankmajer: a tongue torn out and dragging itself along in search of contact and reintegration, streaking blood in its wake.

Singer Distance – Ethan Chatagnier

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Having self-elected into the contact genre, Chatagnier redirects Singer Distance away from the alien essence of this story form, suggesting that earthly issues more deserve our attention.

Baron Bagge – Alexander Lernet-Holenia

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It’s unclear (even to Bagge himself) if he is in a state of post-traumatic shock or whether he has even survived the battle.

The Speak Angel Series – Alice Notley

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Published this year by Fonograf Editions alongside a collection of reissues entitled Early Works, this volume continues, and perhaps culminates, the visionary-epic line of Notley’s work.

Rancher – Selah Saterstrom

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No matter how profoundly the rapist’s actions affected the victim, the man himself, separated from that act, is nothing. Or not much, anyway. A boring man in a boring ranch house.

Love Me Tender – Constance Debré

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Love Me Tender channels the performative masculinity of Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie and the restless thirst of Jane DeLynn’s lesbian cruising novel Don Juan in the Village. In other words, Love Me Tender is hot.

The Bulgarian Psychiatrist – Thomas McGonigle

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The murderous logic and hypocrisy of communist rule in Bulgaria . . . serves as a haunting backdrop to this dense and caustic piece of fiction that treads along unsettling nihilist pathways.

Jinx Freeze – Hurk

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Welcome to a dysfunctional society!

stemmy things – imogen xtian smith

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Pleasure triumphs over production. stemmy things lives up to this axiom, hitting the reader with a sticky frankness that elicits both surprise and gratitude.

Metabolics – Jessica E. Johnson

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Johnson’s diagrams not only play with her background and love for biology but manage to capture the experiences of motherhood and a mother’s body that cannot be expressed with words.