lucid dreaming and Rodney King, defining “real black writing,” fiction by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés and Kirstin Valdez Quade, painting portraiture, rendering the criminal justice system, poetry by Don Mee Choi and Rae Paris, and interviews with Jamaica Kincaid, Juanita Diaz-Cotto, and Judy Juanita
This is the vocabulary of killing.
the general’s winter lemons
packed in a munitions crate
tamped shut with square nailsfor the conscripted men
to suck in wedges
Let them laugh
a boy’s laugh as they try to bull’s-eye
their cuts of sun on the peaceable backs
of those grazing, broad-faced ponies.
Now I hear the good voices.
All of this waiting
For the world to begin.
A very merry issue day to you, dear readers! There’s Guernica’s PEN World Voices Festival Panel, features by Mary Costello and Nina Martyris, interviews with Cheryl Strayed and Paul Chappell, art from Adel Abidin, fiction from Patrick White and Ror Wolf, and poetry from Cynthia Cruz and Adam Houle. Read, reread.
The pines above shed needles and feathers
and below, the rattlesnake is beautiful enough
to skin, if only I could catch him
Steam fountains up
and forms sastrugas, greeting our faces
like sheer tongues
Guernica is an award-winning online magazine of ideas, art, poetry, and fiction published twice monthly. Guernica Daily, the magazine’s blog, is updated every weekday.
Top
