Category Archives: Issue

Issue #28 – Witness

When I started thinking about the theme for this issue of the journal, I couldn’t get my mind off “witnessing.” Maybe because sometimes I feel like all I can do is witness and witness and witness the things this country is doing, has done, and will do to my people and all people.

Read the full guest editor letter from Ashley M. Jones

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
On Time by Xavier Burgin

Trading Beads by Yvonne

Vulnerability Study by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

A Lashing by Laura Secord

Reeducated in a Rural Village in Beijing by Xiaoly Li

Urban Pastoral in Stereo: 3 Audio Pieces by Saleem [h.u.e.] Penny

Your Addiction Has Affected Me in the Following Ways by L Mari Harris

Family Matter by Ellen Stone

I Blues tha Rain, 40 Days & 40 Nights by henry 7. reneau, jr.

Selections from Kwoya Fagin Maples’ Mend

Cookie by Cover Artist Amoxes

Review: The Typists Play Monopoly by Kathleen McClung

Rachel Nix Interviews Samantha Lamph/Len and Kevin D. Woodall of Memoir Mixtapes

Rachel Nix Interviews Ashley M. Jones


About Our Guest Editor
Ashley M. Jones is a poet, organizer, and educator from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017) and dark / / thing (Pleiades Press, 2019). Her poetry has earned local and national awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #27 – Joy Sticks

During Stalin’s rule, poet Anna Akhmatova memorized her poems because she was afraid to commit them to paper. The written poem was evidence of a crime—the insistence on thinking and feeling for herself. To write joy in a time of fear is an act of resistance and repudiation.

Read the full guest editor letter from Alina Stefanescu

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
Impressionable by Norah Priest

Mushrooms and Dew by Anastasia Cojocaru

Birth Night Pantoum by Jeanie Thompson

Bad Trip by Meg Tuite

Trail: Easter’s Eve, 2015 by Heidi Lynn Staples

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Kookaburra by Melinda Jane – The Poet Mj

Queynte by John Repp

Divorcees by Jasmine Don

Tasha Yar At Her Best by Shanti Weiland

I Want To Be a Drag Queen Diva by Steven A. Gillis

On Your Way to and Mostly After a Car Wreck by Marvin Shackelford

In Death They Bloom by Cover Artist Sarah Shields

This Is How Two Women Have Sex [2] by Emily Blair

Encircled by Meg Drummond-Wilson

The Girl in the Boat by Larry Blazek

Rachel Nix Interviews Jeanie Thompson of Alabama Writers’ Forum

Rachel Nix Interviews Alina Stefanescu


About Our Guest Editor
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama with four incredible mammals. Find her poems and prose in recent issues of Juked, DIAGRAM, New South, Mantis, VOLT, Cloudbank, New Orleans Review Online, and others. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize in Short Fiction. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes and President of the Alabama State Poetry Society. More arcana online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #26 – The Lyric Essay

That which at first appears to be a lyric essay may be something else, just as the converse may also be true. And that which at first appears real, under scrutiny, demonstrates a deficit of reality. So writers use language to shore up cordons around the insufficiently-real object or phrase or event precisely so that she may vivisect it into a desired product, torture it into manageability.

Read the full guest editor letter from Wes Jamison

The Lyric Essay Cover Final small

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
Only the Gentle, Only the Strong by Samuel J Fox

A Brief History of Women and Failure by Kristen Holt-Browning

A Wish You Must Cultivate by Bill Wolak

Good Guess by Kristine Langley Mahler

A Requirement Unrequited by Emily Townsend

3. I Forgot the Stance of Cliffs Meeting Water by Anne Gorrick

Variables by Nora Bonner

Don’t Feed the Yao Guai! by Colee Wong

Rorschach Research by Ivars Balkits

“Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1927” by Ansel Adams by Eric Dean Wilson

Dissonance by Cover Artist Ann Bowler

That Thing That You Don’t Talk About by Dennis Humphrey

Rachel Nix Interviews Samuel J Fox of Bending Genres

Rachel Nix Interviews Wes Jamison


About Our Guest Editor

 

Wes Jamison Editor PicWes Jamison’s work appears or is forthcoming in 1913, Diagram, Fifth Wednesday, Essay Press, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

 

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #25 – Queer Spaces

It means so many things to be a part of the queer community. By some, we are feared for the way we experience love and rarely celebrated for our expressions of it—oftentimes forcing us to keep so much of who we are to ourselves. One of my favorite lines of poetry states that “it is the voices that make me pull at / my skin this way already stretched / and scarred too many voices on the / inside trying to get out and only / one mouth.”* To me, this is what it feels like to be queer within too many of our communities. It is therefore vital for us to encourage acts of creative expression, so that our mouths become only one of many vehicles used to communicate with the world outside of our bodies.

Read the full guest editor letter from Alesha J Dawson

 

Queer Spaces Cover Final smallGuest Editor’s Spotlight:
Lineage by Jay Douglas

And Then With a Spin I Am Boy Again by Ari Burford

Neo by Tyrek Greene

The Endless, Pressing Night by Holden Wright

Instructions for Those Who have Learned Not to Cry by Alex Vigue

Fernweh by Tamzin Mitchell

Aubade with Pin by Robert Carr

Lesser Erotic Incantations by Ava Hofmann

My Sweet Little Friends by Cover Artist David Andersson

Rachel Nix Interviews Sam Singleton

Rachel Nix Interviews Alesha J Dawson


About Our Guest Editor
Alesha Dawson
Alesha J Dawson
is the editor-in-chief of Screen Door Review—Literary Voices of the Queer South. She has a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh and has worked as an adjunct English professor at the University of Montevallo and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She currently works as a case manager at a life insurance company during the day to allow for her editing and writing by night. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her two cats, Pushkin and Bede.

 

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #24 – Solitude’s Spectrum

Solitude is a part of every life, and from person to person it can mean something different and new, something dour and tragic, something essential and protected, desired, feared. When I first put into words why I felt solitude would make such a fascinating theme for an issue, I had my own unique connotation in mind, my own vision of solitude: the cool, quiet afternoons spent alone writing, puttering about, resting, reading, no need to go out, no need to have anyone in, just staying tucked away because going out can be so damned draining sometimes. I seek days alone. I need days alone. Solitude is an essential companion. And while I know not everyone’s vision of the word “solitude” is the same, and I expected different variations on the tune, the array of interpretations that spilled into our inbox surpassed any of my expectations.

Read the full guest editor letter from James H Duncan

Solitude's Spectrum Cover Final 2

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
(of use) by Megan Merchant

Titanium Wrench by Jonathan Travelstead

After Noon by Thomas Gillaspy

Rapture of the Deep by CJ Spataro

Campfires by Bridget Clawson

Peter Discovers Wrinkles in his Shadow by Shahé Mankerian

The Trash Man by Andrew Mondry

Dead Mako by Tomas Bird

Reflection by Shanti Weiland

Night Bloom by Samantha Malay

Two Eggs by Rebecca Schumejda

Agates by Benjamin Malay

Tartaruga by Catherine Arra

The Immigrant, 1909 by Kenneth Wolman

When I Bite My Tongue I Think of the Year I Was Addicted to Xanax by Siaara Freeman

No-One Suspects Your Shoulderblades of Wings by Wes Jamison

  Wind and Space by Cover Artist Brad G. Garber

Wings Outside the Window: Review of Chloe Honum’s Then Winter by Sonja Johanson

Rachel Nix Interviews April Michelle Bratten

 Rachel Nix Interviews James H Duncan


About Our Guest Editor
James H DuncanJames H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review, a literary magazine celebrating the traveling word. After graduating from Southern Vermont College in Bennington, VT in 2004, he took to the road and traversed the long stretches of highway between Maine and California, Mexico and Montreal, finding moments of respite in book shops, dive bars, cafes, diners, and train stations. Along the way, James worked as a landscaper, drove a snow plow, painted houses, slept through overnight security jobs, toiled as a chef, and held a few handyman jobs before transitioning to wordsmith positions at trade publishers, newspapers, as a writer for American Artist magazine, and as an acquisitions editor for Writer’s Digest Books. Twice nominated for the Best of the Net award and once for the Pushcart Prize for my poetry, James is the author of a dozen collections of poetry and fiction, including What Lies In Wait, Dead City Jazz, Berlin, and The Cards We Keep, and has appeared in such magazines as Drunk Monkeys, Five:2:One, Pulp ModernRed Fez, Plainsongs, Reed Magazine, The Homestead Review, The Battered Suitcase, San Pedro River Review, Up the Staircase, The Aurorean, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Gutter Eloquence Magazine, among many others. He currently writes columns for The Blue Mountain Review and hosts a monthly poetry read series in Troy, NY alongside poet R.M. Engelhardt called The Troy Poetry Mission. When he’s not freelancing, he’s writing novels, columns, short stories, and poetry. For more, please visit www.jameshduncan.com.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #23 – Up Yours!

You deserve to be angry. If you’re questioning yourself, if you think you should magically acquire a hyper-masculine stiff upper lip and stop “overreacting,” if you find yourself feeling diminished just by walking on your college campus or at your office job or sitting down at a family dinner—I promise, what you’re feeling is valid.

Read the full guest editor letter from Hannah Hamilton

Up Yours! Cover

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
Mindcunt by Alison Rumfitt

End Game by Nancy Ludmerer

The Comrade by Kathleen McClung

Tears from a Frontline by Arusha Topazzini

#PinoyPride by Sade Andria Zabala

Diagnosis: Super Dick by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas

Boat Guy by Joe Dornich

Mass Media by Sierra Schepmann

Biggest Fan by Christopher T. Werkman

Waterless Cooking by Karl Williams

Role Model by Barbara Nishimoto

Angry Giraffe by Jessy Randall

I Curse Because by Ping Wang

The Mermaids by Erinn Batykefer

Cover Art for Up Yours! by Dorthy Ray

Rachel Nix Interviews Dustin Pearson

 Rachel Nix Interviews Hannah Hamilton


About Our Guest Editor
Hannah in CarHannah Hamilton lives in Baton Rouge, LA, and is currently finishing up her last year of undergrad at Louisiana State University. More importantly, she makes killer stir-fry, is terribly concerned with the exploitation of imbalanced power dynamics, and enjoys writing vaguely autobiographical werewolf poetry in the margins of all her notebooks. Sometimes she takes naps on her lunch break at work.

cahoodaloodaling is excited to announce that Hannah will be remaining on staff as our new assistant editor!

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #22 – Of Distance and Discord

What then are the seeds of non-spatial distance? That which isolates one from the world? The haunting pieces in cahoodaloodaling’s Winter 2017 edition attempt to unearth the answer…

Read the full guest editor letter from Sade Andria Zabala.

Of Distance and Discord Cover

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
This Is a Serious Consideration by Megan Merchant

Ourland by Sue Hyon Bae

Drifting Across Town on the Top Deck by Vicky Waters

Wrong Number by Michael Brockley

Freeway Sex by Alexis Rhone Fancher

To Gorgeous, Love Sis by Chuck Nwoke

All-American Roommate by M. Wright

Kansas by Ana Prundaru

Elizabeth’s Request by Maggie Blake Bailey

Brieftrager by Robert Bharda Ward

Below the Line by Ryan Harper

How to Drive Across the Country by Vivian Wagner

No Eyes by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam & Peter Brewer

L’aurore by Meg Drummond-Wilson

Tarots & Irony by Klarisse Medina

Our Escape by Diana Hurlburt

In-Season by Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll

She Called Me a Dirty Jew by Phyllis Wax

The Favorite by Kelly Flynn

Some Place Not Here by Jessica Barksdale

Cover Art: Of Distance and Discord by Julie Chua

Rachel Nix Interviews Shinjini Bhattacharjee

Review of Dream Job: Wacky Adventures of an HR Manager by Janet Garber


About Our Guest Editor
Sade Andria ZabalaSade Andria Zabala is a Filipina mermaid living in Denmark.

She is the author of poetry books WAR SONGS and Coffee & Cigarettes (Thought Catalog Books, 2016). Her writing has appeared on Literary Orphans, Words Dance Publishing, Hooligan Magazine, and more.

When she’s not busy watching Survivor or having a knife fight with her anxiety, she writes for Thought Catalog. Follow her Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #21 – Give It to Me E-gain: The Chapbook Review Issue

I adore chapbooks. Usually themed, they can simmer a story down to its bare emotional essentials, while at the same time displaying a keen sense of language. Like a full length collection, their forms of self-expression run the gamut from poetry to fiction to nonfiction and even hybrid works—all in a delightfully consumable-in-one-sitting package. In our Give It To Me E-gain issue you will find a sampling of this diversity, and like a chapbook, this spotlight of works selected by our staff is designed to be a brief read. Their impact though is anything but ephemeral.

Raquel Thorne

Give It to Me E-gain Final Cover

book dot dot dot 2
The BureauThe Bureau
Les Kay

Poetry
30 pages
Sundress Publications (2015)
FREE pdf

On the conference call, Rimbaud complained
from Vladivostok that several ventures would suffer
languid sales and laughable costs if the training staff cannot
convey the softer side of capitalism

(from “An Apple That Falls”)

A narrative which is both disjunctive and invasive, The Bureau imagines a systemic corralling of the everyman in a world with a capitalist governmental run organization loves its populace into assuming compliant positions. While not quite detailing a dystopian, at least not from the viewpoint of our narrator, who may or may not be losing his mind, the manuscript is eerie and makes poignant connections to our own society. The Bureau is also playful, incorporating elements of magical realism and occasional humor with characters such as an iguana who consults, a boss who may or may not be Satan, and a Spanish-speaking collie, who is, after all, a bitch. Published in a typewriter font and incorporating redaction, the presentation is as smart as the writing.

Read excerpts from The Bureau

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 2 cahoodaloodaling
Call It a PremonitionCall It a Premonition
Jess Feldman

Poetry
18 pages
BOAAT Press (2015)
FREE pdf

What is the Voynich Manuscript? A complex code, some lost language, or a hoax? (Or, as this reviewer previously believed, an excuse for a medieval doodler to draw fantastical plants, astronomical musings, and naked ladies bathing?) Voynich Manuscrit Naked Bathing

By offering us a translation, Call It a Premonition does what scientists, linguists, and even a team of WWII code breakers have not been able to do. Feldman’s author of the Voynich Manuscript is a young woman growing up in the 1400s and an avid diary keeper. Starting with an account of how “sir gawain won’t look at me/ even though I wore my best frock,” this wildly charming echap, full of smart side-eye, walks the line between the gender expectations of middle ages and a modern feminist lens.

Read excerpts from Call It a Premonition

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 7 cahoodaloodaling
Forensic ForagingForensic Foraging with Crawdaddy
Cover Artist William C. Crawford

These photos embody the forensic foraging technique of photography Crawford developed with his colleague, Sydney lensman, Jim Provencher. Whether in color or black and white, they feature extensive shooting of everything encountered, bringing Main Street Americana and abroad alive in their most base, everyday state. The images are then selectively presented with heavy contrast and saturation, with minimal computer manipulation. This genre borrows heavily from Stephen Shore and his color post cards from Amarillo, as well as the photographic DNA of Walker Evans on the move (foraging?). Read more about this technique in the essay “Forensic Foraging Embraces Minimalist Throwback Techniques To Unlock An Evolving Photographic Genre,” co-authored by Provencher.

View Art Feature

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 11 cahoodaloodaling
In the Voice of a Minor SaintIn the Voice of a Minor Saint
Sarah J. Sloat

Poetry
38 pages
Sundress Publications (reprint 2016; originally published Tilt Press 2009)
FREE pdf

If the moon comes out bearing nicks and bite marks,
you’ll find me smoothing my skin of its cares tonight.

Under a halo the size of a ring, the old
arguments sit splitting their oldest hairs tonight.

Look at me crooked. Mistake me for Eve. If looks
deceive, who knows which mask our maker wears tonight?

(from “Ghazal with Heavenly Bodies”)

In the Voice of a Minor Saint highlights the extraordinary in ordinary moments: the golden of a shaft of wheat, the heavy buzzing of bees at the end of summer, the sadness of a barren womb. Her language is rich and musical, never overbearing and always tonal. Sloat gives voice to the forgotten, the disenchanting, the wallflower of the world; she unwraps her universe carefully and lovingly. Each poem is always delicately woven, each word carefully picked; it is difficult not to be moved and charmed by the recurring themes and feelings conveyed in this book, not to elevate to sainthood what may seem insignificant. I was delighted to discover not one but two Ghazals in the folds of this chapbook, a form we do not often seeone more minor saint brought to our attention by Sloat’s clever writing.

Read excerpts from In the Voice of a Minor Saint

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 1 cahoodaloodaling
The Marriage BedThe Marriage Bed
Elaine Ford
Fiction
62 pages
Wordrunner eChapbooks (November 14, 2015)
FREE to read online, $2.99 Kindle & additional formats on Smashwords

The seven stories in The Marriage Bed examine the ways that romantic relationships are complex, risky, and disappointing endeavors that people can’t help but enter into. In the collection’s third story, ironically titled “Rita Lafferty’s Lucky Summer,” an unnamed narrator tells the story of her thirty-year-old female coworker’s love affair with a man who proves not to be what she initially thought. Ford develops the boyfriend’s deceit skillfully. He is purportedly a train conductor, yet is always available to pick Rita up after her work shift, no matter what time she gets off. When the narrator questions this, Rita naively answers, “He has a lot of seniority. He gets first crack at the work sheet.” In response, the narrator tells us, “Well, I believed it if she did.” Ford crafts her characters with compassion. Even when the two young women discover the boyfriend passed out in his apartment after failing to pick Rita up after work, and his drinking problem is exposed, no judgment is made of him. Or of Rita, for becoming his fiancée.

Read an excerpt from The Marriage Bed

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 4 cahoodaloodaling

 

 

Medicine by Tomas BirdMedicine
Tomas Bird & The Madman’s Cabaret
EP (2016)
3 Songs
£1.50 GBP  BandCamp any and all proceeds donated to charity

Redemption for me I think,
Is now slim.

(from “Meteoros”)

Previously published in our Trigger Warning issue with his song “Senses,” Bird is back with a new EP Medicine. With a haunting ambient quality, Bird seamlessly mixes folk and psychedelic qualities together with his own soulful lyrics. Although only three songs long, this EP is a burning mix of contradictions, providing a stunning breadth of the human experience.

Take heed of the warnings,
But follow your heart.
                ***
The only aim you see,
Is to live.

(from “Draw in the Dirt”)

Listen to a sample from Medicine

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 9 cahoodaloodaling
NeilNeil
J. Bradley
Flash Fiction
26 pages
Five Quarterly (2015)
FREE Issuu

Neil asks where the photos are. I hand him a sheet of paper, his favorite green crayon. “What do you want to remember?”

“Mom.”

“You know what to do.”

The crayon hits my collarbone. “I know you have to have at least one photo of her. Where is it?”

It’s better you forget. It’s better to learn to quit missing her.

(from “Habitat”)

Simultaneously sweet and creepy, Neil creates parallels between father and son. First our narrator about he and his son (the titular Neil), and then he and his father. Parenting techniques that go from “straight out of Parenthood magazine” to “curious but effective and clever” to “worse than The Great Santini” to “something isn’t right” actually serve a narrative purpose. Intergenerational kidnapping. In both: A motherless upbringing. A call to be absolutely average to avoid attention. A call to simultaneously remember and forget. For the narrator, this is second nature and, for whatever the reason, he continues his father’s tradition. No explanation offered. No explanation ever given. Not by his father to him nor one from him to Neil. Cleverly written, this is a piece full of questions with no answers. Infer and guess at your own risk.

Read excerpts from Neil

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 1 cahoodaloodaling
No Ghost Goes UnnoticedNo Ghost Goes Unnoticed
M. Drew Williams
Poetry
21 pages
Leaf Garden Press (2016)
FREE pdf or name your price epub/mobi

No Ghost Goes Unnoticed is sure of itself, and aware of its distance from the world at large and its curator’s core, though as the poems progress, it becomes clear: it was not always this way. Its enticing medical metaphors slowly color in the story with hints of the poet’s empathetic, and often self-deprecating, character through poems about seemingly insignificant things as is highlighted in “Comparison.” While the cold, removed voice generically gives little away about the underlying story, there are refreshing moments of sensitivity as with “An Elegy for Daytime.” The author offers many metaphors for his distant voice in, “The Desert is Decidedly Quiet,” “Image of a Stranger,” “Conquistador,” among others. The work showcased in No Ghost Goes Unnoticed gives away how visceral the experiences that led to this book were, to house the startling awareness they give the reader. “Palabras” gives the most insight into his interactions with people, eloquently, using wordplay about a designated number of words recycled to get through the author’s day. No Ghost Goes Unnoticed explains depression, loss, and numbness in both exceedingly vulnerable and impassive, if unfeeling, ways.

Read excerpts from No Ghost Goes Unnoticed

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 8 cahoodaloodaling

 

 

The Persistence of BonylegThe Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated
Sarah Minor
Hybrid
48 pages
Essay Press (2015)
FREE Issuu or pdf

126. Narrator: Maybe I will have a little child for a while. Then, when she gets too big, when she first starts hurting, I will eat her.

127. Narrator: She will only ever be the right kind of alone.

This hybrid essay explores the manner in which our patriarchal society has historically, and currently, talked about women, particularly those existing outside of the normative expectations of heterosexual marriage. With many irons in the fire, The Persistence of the Bonyleg juxtaposes the real-life history of the Lykov family, a Russian family of Old Believers who moved deep into the wilderness to avoid prosecution, with the mythology of Baba Yaga, elements of traditional fairy tale narrative, the writings of Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić, and the narrator’s own interjections. Agafia Lykov, the last surviving family member and an unmarried older woman, is placed center-stage. Stylistically, The Persistence of the Bonyleg splits its narrative between two collocating writing styles. Even pages recount the Lykov’s family’s struggles and religious practices in the taiga, chronicled in poetic passages which are narrated by a tree stump (one recalls The Giving Tree). Odd pages take inspiration from the Bible by numbering their verses and script conventions (most likely an influence from the documentary Far Out: Agafia’s Taiga Life) where each line is voiced by a character. Rather than lead the reader directly to a single thesis, Minor’s feminist essay asks the reader to confront the text and allow their thoughts to take part in the conversation.

Read excerpts from The Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 10 cahoodaloodaling
PortagePortage
Sarah Ann Winn

Poetry
21 pages
Sundress Publications (2015)
FREE pdf

I was made to portage, by Portage, a girl raised by reservoirs,

lifted from one lake and carried to the next,
made to find joy in journeys.

(from “Alma”)

Stringing together vivid tellings from youth and discovery to loss and regaining wonder, Winn reminds us of the fluidity of our lives, however jagged moments seem in the now. There is movement, always some sort of progression. The highlight of this collection is simplicity: the poetry is both relatable but individual with focal points such as apples, a hammer, or camera lens. These seemingly trivial objects add tremendous depth to the poemsas we notice there’s always an object in our recollection that seems insignificant to a broader picture but was, in truth, the center of a moment.

Read excerpts from Portage

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 3 cahoodaloodaling
Revisiting Dreamworlds
Revisiting Dreamworlds: Art Feature
Eddy Martin Graham

Graham’s artwork is about individuals becoming their own selves within their dreamworlds, the facing of hard facts within reality, and how by intertwining fantasy with the day to day, humans manifest their own destinies.

View Art Feature

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 12 cahoodaloodaling
Shake It Up & Throw It at Something Hard
Shake it up & throw it at something hard
BT Shaw
Hybrid
30 pages
Essay Press (2016)
FREE Issuu or pdf

So you think creating a baby makes someone intelligent. I would say the opposite may be true. Why would a peaceful person like Jesus create a baby?

(from, “If Jesus was perfect, how come he couldn’t solve calculus problems and equations and create the atomic baby?”)

A game of mad libs gone awry (“Babies for bombs! Bombs for babies!”), Shake it up and throw it at something hard does more than cause some silly imagery. In the process of finding humor in a thousand babies pelting down on an unsuspecting city or swaddled-up bombs given names like Kimmy or Bryan as they are presented fresh and pink and blinking to the world, the reader is forced to give pause. In the midst of this laughter, there is a deeper contextual possibility. Overpopulation. Humans waging war. Bombs created. Bombs as tools…but only for war. (What else could bombs be? Even fireworks contain danger.) Lack of sexual education. Romanticizing war; downplaying destruction. Accessibility, accessibility, accessibility. In short: A strange yet marvelous read.

Read excerpts from Shake it up & throw it at something hard

Book-Text-Divider-Hand-Drawn 5 cahoodaloodaling

When Minerva's Knees Hit the Ground
When Minerva’s Knees Hit the Ground
Amanda Oaks
Poetry
55 pages
Words Dance Publishing (2016)
FREE pdf

but my mind
was made
for the game
it plays,

it lives
for the bluff

(from “In This Room We Can’t Touch the Floor”)

Oaks nods to The Deftones with this collection, but whether you dig the band or not isn’t a huge deal; these poems have their own appeal, while maintaining the rhythmic and emotive draw of music. Where that likeness ends is the conversational approach she takes to point the pieces inward or toward a lover, all while keeping things curiously anonymous. The erasures come across blunt, but show intent, whereas the original poems they’re paired with bounce between the chaos of infatuation, admissions of flaws, and the way hurt contributes to self-awareness. This layout gives the book a unique posture: strong, with earned fragilities, but ultimately resilient.

Read excerpts from When Minerva’s Knees Hit the Ground

book dot dot dot 2

 

 

Reviews & Interviews

book dot dot dot 2

 

Support a fee-free reader award and get awesome perks, including handwritten poems by Trigger Warning poets Siaara Freeman and Heather Bell, or limited edition postcards by Trigger Warning’s guest editor Meggie Royer! Help Launch Tandem Reader Awards.

TRA AD 2016 Final

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #20 – Trigger Warning

 

Trigger Warning Cover cropped

noun: A brief statement alerting a reader, listener, or viewer
to troubling or traumatic content ahead.

Because of the triggering content of this issue, we have published it as a PDF, which you are welcome to redistribute in its entirety. To download and read the issue, click on the image above. Take your time. Practice self care. Be well.

Thank you to our contributors and everyone who submitted for your immense bravery and honesty, and your willingness to share such intensely personal and often painful experiences with us. We are deeply honored.

Featuring work by: Eunice Andrada, Allison Austad, Elliott batTzedek, Heather Bell, Majnun Ben-David, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Tomas Bird, Emma Bleker, Carl Boon, Levi Cain, Marina Carreira, Lisa D. Chavez, Hannah Clark, Martha Clarkson, Ryder Collins, Cameron Conner, Melina Coogan, Krista Cox, Vanessa Crofskey, Sally Deskins, Marta Djekic, Liz Dolan, Tyler Earls, Kari Ann Ebert, Melissa Eleftherion, Samantha Fortenberry, Siaara Freeman, Kate Garrett, Karolyn Gehrig, David Gillette, Karrie Higgins, Sophia Jakab, Janne Karlsson, Norman Klein, Dorian Kotsiopoulos, Katia Kozachok, Shawn LaSota, Lili Leader-Williams, MANDEM, JM Miller, Lakshmi Mitra, Jennifer Parks, Dustin Pearson, Simon Perchik, Alison Rumfitt, Michael Russell, Barbara Ruth, Carla Sarett, W. Jack Savage, Elaine Schleiffer, Marian Kaplun Shapiro, Rajendra Shepherd, Meghan Trask Smith, Anthony Spaeth, Meghan Sterling, Carissa L. Stevens, Mary Stone, Ani Tascian, Anne Thériault, AJ Urquidi, Clementine von Radics, Elaine Wang, Sam Herschel Wein, Jerry Wemple, and Scott Wozniak.

 

Internet exclusive: from DV Grey by Karolyn Gehrig

Reviews

 

Interested in joining our eclectic family of staff?
We have several positions open.


Meggie

 

Meggie Royer is an artist and writer from the Midwest. She is the founder of literary magazine Persephone’s Daughters and has had poems in Words Dance, The Harpoon Review, and more. In 2013, she won the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards’ gold medal for poetry and the silver medal for her writing portfolio. She was also an Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize. Read our interview with Meggie.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Issue #19 – Writers Create: A Winter Makers’ Fair

When Kate Hammerich and I began cahoodaloodaling, we set out with some vague notion of the direction we would go—always towards and never away Read the full letter from the editor.

Writers Create Cover

Editor’s Spotlight: Flood by Molly Rideout

Call It Postmodernism by Sarah Bates & Dustin Michael

The Animation Room by Linda Kennedy

What’s Hidden by Lynn Hoffman

Giving Chocolate Raspberry Sauce: The Season to Give by Clinton Siegle

Brown Tissue Moth by Carrie Albert

Collage Undresses the Darkness by Bill Wolak

Unreadable by Allen Crawford

Circadian by Leonard Kogan

The Universe by Carol Smallwood

Fold and Gather by T.A. Noonan

Shirley Xu Interviews Cristiana Leone, Creator of Sunken

Rachel Nix Interviews Amanda Oaks of Words Dance

Our guest editor M. Mack is a genderqueer poet, editor, and fiber artist in Virginia. Ze is the author of the chapbooks Traveling (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015) and Imaginary Kansas (dancing girl press, 2015), and the forthcoming collection Theater of Parts (Sundress Publications, 2016). Ze is a founding co-editor of Gazing Grain Press. Find hir at: mxmack.com.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share