
When there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. again, somehow, one saw life, a pure beat. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be.
-Virginia Woolf, “The Death of the Moth”
EDITOR’S NOTE
Jena Salon
When I think of Virginia Woolf, the picture that springs to mind is a woman in a large dress, wading slowly into a river, her pockets laden with stones so that she will be sure never to surface again. The image is always romantic and never fraught with the realities of drowning, gasping for breath, thrashing as your body struggles to reverse the process. …Read the whole letter here
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ESSAY
Christine Schutt
Country: A Mix Tape
FICTION
Kate Brody
Help Wanted
Carlin Twedt
The Standpipes
Brazil
Ferreira Gullar
Minofagasta; Zinuk
Translated by Anne Freeland
Molly Jean Reid
Dog Story
Justin Kramon
What People Do in Their Apartments
John Kinsella
A Seaside Burial
Madeleine Walker
Windmills
Katherine Zlabek
Love Me, and the World Is Mine
H.E. Francis
The Way Back
POETRY
Clay Matthews
Friday Night Lights
Evening Aubade
Eric Paul
The Visit
Wider
Riot
Bethany Goch
In a Typical Gesture of the Period, She Cut Off Her Hair and Sent It to Him
At the Biker Bar
Response to Your Letter Regarding Lottie Williams, the Only Person Known to Have Been Hit by Space Debris
Romania
Ana Blandiana
The Hidden Light
Stairway
Seed of Darkness
Translated by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea
Amy Meng
Song
Self-Portrait with Questions
Diane Mehta
Brooklyn Sonnets I, IV, V
Korea
Kim Kyung Ju
Manhole
Translated by Jake Levine and Jung Hi-Yeon
Jesse Nathan
Ideas
Ice at Mile Marker 255
Adam Scheffler
My Body
France
Matthieu Baumier
#1; #2; #3
Translated by Elizabeth Brunazzi
Nikolai von Keller
Miraflores
Ghosts
Lydia Minier’s Heart Gives Out While Playing Hide-and-Go-Seek at a Dinner Party
Stephen Massimilla
Her Sacrifice
Matt Rasmussen
Canal
Blurb for a Book of Poems by Deoxygenated Water
Scott Withiam
Massive Efforts
Agendas
Daniel Wolff
Untitled
Untitled
Terrance Owens
The Night Shift