Monthly Dispatch #4 — July 2023

A letter from the editor[s]:

Just a reminder that we’re open for fiction submissions the first two weeks of August — aside from that, see you in September!

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Experimental Prose & Poetry

Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases / Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle – Roque Dalton (tr. Jack Hirschman)

“Whatever his quality, his stature, his finesse, his creative capacity, his success, the poet can only be to the bourgeoisie:
                                                        SERVANT,
                                                        CLOWN or
                                                          ENEMY”

Roque Dalton (1935–1975) was an enormously influential figure in the history of Latin America as a poet, essayist, intellectual, and revolutionary. His legacy extends beyond his achievements as a poet to his political writings and political work in his native El Salvador.

Jack Hirschman (1933–2021) was a poet and translator. Among his recent collections of poetry is The Arcanes #2 (2019). He has translated poets from nine languages. He was an emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco.

Four Poems — Petero Kalulé (petals)

tit4tat

           for sunny

“A gift must not be generous. Generosity must not be its motive or it’s essential character.” — Jacques Derrida


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Petero Kalulé (petals) — she/they — is a composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist living on the hidden river Effra in London; she is the author of Kalimba (Guillemot Press 2019 ), Marsh-River-Raft-Feather (Guillemot Press 2021, co-authored with Clarissa Álvarez), and forthcoming new manuscript & glee & bless. Find their music on bandcamp.

Fiction

Tonopah — Isaac Zisman

“One:

The desert isn’t a desert.

Two:

The desert is and is not empty.

Three:

Emptiness is as much a question of scale as it is a question of perspective.

Four:

It’s hard to see with dust in your eyes.”

Isaac Zisman is a writer living in Oakland, CA. His writing has appeared in the American Alpine Journal, The Millions, No Contact, Fence and elsewhere. He’s currently at work on his first novel. Twitter: @octopus_grigori

Watching Paint Dry — Chris Kohler

“Most six o’clocks I’m still in the van. Winding round the back roads, just leaving a job, leaving the scrappies or the timberyard. They’ve got this woman on the radio. Joanne McTeagan: Scotland’s Psychic. They tease her. She speaks to your ghosts for you. I’m not daft, I know it’s not real.”

Chris Kohler is from Glasgow, Scotland. His short stories have been published in Egress, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Gutter and Dark Mountain. His first novel, Phantom Limb, will be published by Atlantic Books in 2024.

So What Style of Attachment Would You Call This? — Clare Fisher

“I was only four minutes late, but Fran was already sat down, a beer in one hand, a sausage roll in the other.

I thought you weren’t going to come, she said.

Four minutes late is basically on time. I slid onto the bench opposite her.

I know, she said, but I’m basically a pessimist, though a hopeful one.”

Clare Fisher is a prose writer and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield. They are the author of the novel, All the Good Things (Viking, 2017), and the short story collections, How the Light Gets In (Influx Press, 2018). Twitter: @claresitafisher

Angle of List — Douglas Glover

“Moss woke at 6am to the din of pots clattering in the kitchen below. The dog scratched urgently to get out. Wind buffeted the windows. The house shook, tilting like a ship at sea. He had forgotten who he was.”

Douglas Glover is the author of five story collections, four novels, four collections of literary nonfiction. Between 2010 and 2017, he published the online monthly magazine Numéro Cinq. His novel Elle won the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction in Canada and was a finalist for the Impac Dublin Literary Award.

The Departure Lounge/A Short Flight Home — Ian Farnes

“Lying on his back, a sandal on, the other foot is pink and bare and still. There are two men, working on him: one pumping his chest with fingers clasped together, palms down, pumping, and the other, at his mouth, breathing air into him.”

Ian Farnes has worked in dockyards, factories, building sites, call centres, warehouses and restaurants. He lives in Spain with his spouse and young son, working in literature and translation.

Essays & Features

Egon Schiele: The Grimacing Man at the Threshold of the Modern — Cristina Politano

“On October 31, 1918, the Viennese artist Egon Schiele succumbed to the flu pandemic at the age of 28. The collection of drawings and paintings that he left behind reveals the work of a precocious artist through a remarkably formative period. His prolific—some might say frenetic—output consists of many self-portraits of an ambivalently erotic nature. When we peruse Schiele’s catalogue we are alternately attracted and repulsed—drawn in by the immensity of his talent and then repelled by the skeletal frames, hollowed ventral cavities, and sickly straggles of hair that his nudes present to their viewers.”

Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays can be found at Return.Life and on cristinapolitano.substack.com

Interviews

“Violence is the most tender way”: An Interview with Misha Honcharenko — Matthew Kinlin

“Misha Honcharenko is a Ukrainian artist, writer and translator. Skin of Nocturnal Apple is his debut poetry collection, published with Pilot Press. Written in the years prior to Russia’s invasion in 2022, Skin of Nocturnal Apple offers a window into the life of a young queer man living and working in the future war-ravaged country. Matthew Kinlin interviewed Misha via Zoom about his poetry collection and his unpublished novel Trap Unfolds Me Greedily which expands on his relationship with horror, before conducting an interview via email.”

Misha Honcharenko is a Ukrainian artist, writer and translator. He started his Instagram profile as a form of art diary combining weirdness in context of objects and landscapes, exploring himself via photography for almost 8 years now. Instagram: @michgonch

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His two novels Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press) and Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press) were released in 2021. His novella The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit) and first collection of poetry Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books) were released in 2023. Twitter: @garbagemagician.

From the Vaults

Minor Cacophonies: the Minor Literature[s] Mixtape [21/07/2017]

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Coming soon …

We’re on hiatus during August, but look out for a stacked rentrée litteraire edition in September, featuring work by Ben Libman, Tomoé Hill, J.B. Baxter, Carolina Sanín, Mickaël Corriea, Fionn Petch, Mark Lewis, Josh Rothes and much, much more …