No. 1 || DESIRE
Not the heart of it: the edge. Show us what happens on the brink of desire.
Set aside muscle memory and saccharine gestures. This isn’t the place to explore appetites. You will not find in these pages a manual for romance.
The threshold of desire is where the real action lies. It’s where reality is distinguished from possibility.
Desire is the feeling that stretches, that impels us to change. It is the impetus to match interior and exterior. Occasionally it haunts us. It precedes action but also reveals the deficits of our past. It either is or is not limitless. Sometimes it has nothing to do with other people. Other times it makes our hearts ache.
What happens when we follow desire to its furthest boundary? What lessons will this orectic search reveal?
—Nina Lohman, Publisher
NONFICTION
You Don’t Have
to Like It
DARIUS STEWART
FICTION
Assignment for the Real World
CORRESPONDENCE
Dear V-
CORY
HUTCHINSON-REUSS
OFFLINE
Thread
ELISSA WASHUTA
PORTRAIT
Wild Emptiness
KATHRYN SMITH
POETRY
Charismatic
An American Sonnet for Johnson, VT
ART
The Wild Beasts
PETER COCHRANE
Alla Prima Triptych
STEVEN LEYVA
JENNIFER COLVILLE
ART
YANIQUE NORMAN
ENGAGE
JASON BULLUCK
POETRY
I Need Music
ANAÏS DUPLAN
FICTION
The Catcher of Birds
SALMA SALAMA
POETRY
Translated from Arabic by Lubab Eltayeb Elmikashfi and Cecile Goding
FLASH
Caution, Pleasure Center
TARA ISABEL ZAMBRANO
PORTFOLIO
Which Came First, My Fear of Men
or My IBS?
god is a suspect male musician
When I Woke Up,
I Did Not Want
to Die
Video Footage
Where You Get Your Distance From
Two
JULIA ANNA MORRISON
POETRY
The Germ of All Possible Crimes
Threnodies
The Argument
CYNTHIA CRUZ
CORRESPONDENCE
Letters to my First Love
RACHEL YODER
SPENCER WILLIAMS
ART
mountain over mountain
ERIN PALOVICK
