Reviewed by Matthew Walsh Hasan Namir, War/Torn (Book*hug Press, 2019), 114 pp., $18. Hasan Namir, celebrated author of the novel, God in Pink (winner of the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction), is back on the literary scene with his essential debut book of poetry, War/Torn, published by...
Jade Wallace after Jean Day Ours is a generation of wistful and somewhat attractive humans, wanderers in a bad and beautiful slough. We say that all we want are convincingly unisex jackets but what we mean is that we are tired of bitter butterfinger metaphysics, bored of biding our time in the...
Grace Kwan I was five years old when I dreamed of snow for the first time, tucked into my bed in our hilltop apartment in Cloud View Tower, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In my dream, my mom, dad, and I had just emerged from an air-conditioned building into the street’s simmering heat. I was accustomed to...
Reviewed by Marie-Hélène Westgate Zahra Patterson, Chronology (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018), 96 pp., $14. Not by accident, Zahra Patterson grants us entry into her long-form nonfiction essay, Chronology, through failure. The action of the book centers around Patterson’s inability to translate a...
Karine Hack Mashup of Ocean Vuong’s “homewrecker” & Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cinnamon Peeler” when we swam once, white dresses spilling from our feet / in water, late August our mothers / left with no trace your father’s tantrum turned, turning our hands dark red as if wounded: a wildfire we...
David Ly Too many men are too afraid to be tender, too raw. My love makes me fearless with fangs and a flickering tongue plucked from a king cobra. I match the wildness someone else wished into you until you were abandoned. Nothing between us is forbidden, too much, too scary. Your harpy talons...
