Issue 01

Call for Submissions: A Picture’s Worth 1000 500 Words

Between September 15 and October 31 2022, we’re soliciting flash fiction, lyric essays, prose poems or single-page comics inspired by the (untitled) image below by artist Mary Lum. This image will also appear on the cover of Issue 41, and Guest Editor Elizabeth Graver – in consultation with Post Road’s editorial board – will choose selections from the submissions received for that issue’s Folio.

Please click here to learn more about Mary Lum’s work, and here to submit your work to be considered for the Post Road 41 Guest Folio. We look forward to reading your submissions!

ART:
Elizabeth Awalt

CRITICISM:
Vanessa Gregorchik

FICTION:
Eric Buechel, Christina Craigo, L Favicchia , Shane Jones , Christopher Kang , Eric Lundgren , Douglas Mac Neil , Louise Marburg , Vi Khi Nao , Darina Sikmashvili , Greg Tebbano , Allison Titus

GUEST FOLIO: Edited by Allison Adair:
Yalie Saweda Kamara, Maurice Manning , Philip Metres , Matthew Olzmann , Leslie Sainz , Mary Meriam , Gaia Rajan

NONFICTION:
Brittany Ackerman , Cara Lynn Albert , Ted Lardner, Andrew Bertaina, Matthew Burnside, MJ Clark, Diana Raab , Robert Warf

POETRY:
Mike Barrett, Katie Berta , David Moolten, Tawanda Mulalu , Supritha Rajan , SM Stubbs

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Leah Hampton , David Philip Mullins , Laura Villareal

THEATRE:
Mehdi M. Kashani

The River + Landscape as Interior

Supritha Rajan

The River

It remembers everything.

White tufts the cottonwoods shook free.
Leaves that papered its face with gold
and vermillion eyes and in their afterlife became
wine-red cargo the light
at every depth cycles through.
How a sky of barely moving clouds
each day made legible the history
of its evanescence. Impossible
to lie still with the future’s repeatable knowledge,
for such stillness not to be the condition of
its flight from shadow from sun-glare from
night after night in the panic of privacy
turning from one bank then the other to say
I know you’ll mock me for saying this,
but each day I reach rock bottom.
Impossible to speak and not sound like
something else—the night’s whistle midsummer
or the song a child sings to herself as she strings
purple butterflies. Its real voice resembling the force
of pleasure troubled neither by rocks nor reeds nor driftwood
but its recollection of them—the phantom
body its body here outraces, there in a flush
will release—what rowing across its back we name
current, meaning now a moment foreclosed
of promise, now a moment weighted with promise.
The tempo of regret a cool backwash
of moonlight and asters and marsh marigold eddying
in then out to the sea its muddied mouth refuses
to change into saying my bed armored with smooth stones,
my willow curtains, my shards of blue—the recurring
landscape it knows itself by and so
will not leave. Impossible to contain
a body everywhere entered by light, mint-orange flesh
that daily drinks itself to remember itself
as the body that never once was its own.
Purple and porous, a small sea within the possible
sea, some part already tastes of salt, some part
(even in the rehearsal of not knowing) knows
it will soon be lost to the mouth through which
it enters and exits.

Landscape as Interior

Bird-space. Wingbeats
of October flight.

Autumn’s crisp perfume
barely descending.

There is a lake before me
too thick with algae

to mirror anything.
A vaporous tissue

veils the distance
while a worn music slides

off nature’s varnished instruments.
Slowly, in the slowed

rhythm of even regret, I step
into the mired surface.

Leaves shelve then
reshelve along the banks to form

tomorrow’s wrecked residual.
Under a layer of lily pads and molten leaves

I crouch and hug my knees
like a morose child, attuned

to a low-murmuring acoustic,
my hair flowing up

like blanket weed
as I observe through

squinted eyes
the progress of formless

flow. Mint-green
understand

not only the color
of regret

but also the body’s light
deconstructed and

into further light
decanting.

Supritha Rajan is presently an associate professor of English at the University of Rochester. Her poetry has been awarded Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Prize and nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in such journals as New England Review, Gulf Coast, Literary Imagination, New American Writing, Bennington Review, Conjunctions (online), Washington Square Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Antioch Review, and elsewhere.

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Wade, Barry K.
Winter Sky (fiction): PR21, 127

Wagoner, David
The Other Man (poetry): PR26, 113
Spending the Night (poetry): PR26, 114
The Categorical Imperative Poem (poetry): PR26, 115

Waite, Urban
The Lost World (recommendation): PR25, 57

Waldman, Ayelet
An Ice Cream War, By William Boyd (recommendation): PR14, 17

Waldrep, G. C.
Lullabye for My Sister (poetry): PR12, 163
Feast of All Wounds (poetry): PR12, 164
Die Fledermaus (poetry): PR16, 191
Sisyphus in Paradise (poetry): PR16, 192

Waldron, Nicola
Afterbirth (nonfiction): PR33, 15

Walker, Nicole
Drought-Tolerant Tamarisk (Tamarix) Aphylla (nonfiction): PR17, 133

Wallace, Eric J.
The Child Shaman (fiction): PR25, 167

Wallaert, Josh
Upcountry (fiction): PR26, 251

Walsh, William
Recommending “First Love” By Samuel Beckett (recommendation): PR21, 55

Wamsted, Jay
Sticks and Stones (nonfiction): PR38, 243

Ward, Nicholas
The Backyard (nonfiction): PR28, 115

Warf, Robert
Wreckage (nonfiction): PR39, 65

Warloe, Constance
Introduction to From Daughters & Sons to Fathers: What I’ve Never Said (etcetera): PR2, 129

Warrell, Laura K.
Becoming Abigail, By Chris Abani (recommendation): PR28, 235

Warren, Robert Burke
Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell (recommendation): PR32, 73

Warren, Suzanne
The Raspberry King (fiction): PR33, 136

Washington, Thomas
Have You Read My Manuscript? (nonfiction): PR9, 83

Wasow, Oliver
Hay (art): PR24, cover

Waters, Lindsay
Rebuilding Aesthetics From The Ground Up (criticism): PR20, 21

Watson, Brad
Willard and His Bowling Trophies, A Perverse Mystery, By Richard Brautigan (recommendation): PR10, 159

Watterson, Zachary
Open Late Hours (nonfiction): PR23, 167

Webster, Kerri
I Am Become a Blunt Instrument (poetry): PR35, 11

Weinberger, Eliot
At the Sign of The Hand (etcetera): PR9, 188

Weitzel, Wil
How to Sleep With Lions (fiction): PR29, 125

Welle, John P. (trans.)
Translating Brecht, By Franco Fortini (poetry): PR4, 30

Weller, Anthony
The Works of Robert Dean Frisbie (recommendation): PR12, 151

Weller, Sam
The Illustrated Man, By Ray Bradbury (recommendation): PR15, 147

Wells, Brandi
Gather the Daughters By Jennie Melamed (recommendation): PR36, 23

Wheeler, Theodore
Uwe Johnson (recommendation): PR33, 105

Wheelock, Jennifer
Talking Faith With A Friend (poetry): PR31, 142
Regarding His Alzheimer’s (poetry): PR31, 144

Whitcomb, Katharine
Early Medieval (poetry): PR11, 202
Dream On His Birthday (poetry): PR11, 206

White, Derek
Coati Mundi (fiction): PR11, 207

Whiteside, Jim
Cento (poetry): PR29, 151
Saudade (poetry): PR29, 152

Whitney, Kim Ablon
Ann Patchett (recommendation): PR31, 183

Wickenden, Andrew
Story (fiction): PR127, 151

Williams, Dawn
Directing Grand Guignol (theatre): PR1, 61

Williams, Diane
Well-To-Do Person (fiction): PR6, 103
My First Real Home (fiction): PR16, 247

Williams, E. Genevieve
Solstice 6 (art): PR26, 42
Solstice 7 (art): PR26, 47

Williams, Greg
Blue Angel, By Francine Prose (recommendation): PR12, 199

Williams, Jenny D.
Baho! By Roland Rugero (recommendation): PR34, 175

Williams, Tyrone
How On Earth (poetry): PR25, 99
Wah Wah (poetry): PR25, 100

Williamson, Sean
Fever On Good Friday (fiction): PR37, 193

Wilson, Jason
What Is the Color of Hope In Haiti? (etcetera): PR3, 168

Wilson, Jonathan
Chiara (fiction): PR28, 225

Winn, Tracy
Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s Cold Snap (recommendation): PR21, 153

Winthrop, Elizabeth Hartley
Dirt Music, By Tim Winton (recommendation): pr14, 81

Wisdom, Alison
What Can a Ship Do for an Island? (fiction): PR34, 169

Wise, Marie Gray
Pennsylvania School of Ballet Closes Due to Snow + About Girls Standing On Steps (poetry): PR37, 117

Wisniewski, Mark
Calculus (poetry): PR14, 37
Land (poetry): PR14, 40

Wolff, Rebecca
Mamma Didn’t Raise No Fools (poetry): PR2, 96
A Good Idea, But Not Well-Executed (poetry): PR2, 98

Wolos, Gregory J.
The Wild Pandas of Chincoteague (fiction): PR27, 89

Wood, Ann
The Road to Los Angeles, By John Fante (recommendation): PR14, 215

Wood, Monica
We Need to Talk About Kevin, By Lionel Shriver and George Eliot’s Later Novels (recommendation): PR13, 179

Woodward, Angela
Carnality (fiction): PR31, 166

Woodward, Kristine
Knox Martin – Woman: Black and White Paintings (art): PR21, 33
Richard Hambleton: The American Pop Expressionist (art): PR27, 33

Worden, Olivia
Delivery (fiction): PR30, 179

Wormser, Baron
Fictional Essay: John Berryman, B. 1914 (etcetera): PR13, 95
Southern California Ode (1969) (poetry): PR26, 101
Climate (poetry): PR26, 103

Wright, Carolyne
Betty Carter at the Blue Room (poetry): PR27, 157
Dixie White House Photo (poetry): PR27, 159
Not On My Resume (poetry): PR35, 193
Don’t Tell the Flies (poetry): PR35, 195

Wright, Charles
W. G. Sebald (recommendation): PR2, 179

Wunderlich, Mark
Device for Burning Bees and Sugar (poetry): PR8, 13
It’s Your Turn to Do the Milking, Father Said (poetry): PR8, 15

Wuori, G. K.
The Home for Wayward Clocks By Kathie Georgio (recommendation): PR27, 177

Wurth, Erika T.
Brandon Hobson: The Cherokee Novelist Who Quietly Kicked Off the Fifth Wave In Native American Fiction (recommendation): PR38, 97

Spaghettification

by Ali Raz

Spaghettification is a scientific word. It refers to the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (i.e. spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field. A black hole would generate such a field, for instance – and not much else. This means that the phenomenon is purely imaginary. It is a hypothetical. Even the name suggests this.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Turku claimed to have witnessed spaghettification. They wrote a paper about it. In this paper, they discussed having ‘seen’, via high-frequency radio waves, the debris of a shattered star. The star had been shattered upon contact with the gravitational field of a black hole. The star had been spaghettified.

In support of this, the researchers offered printed sheets of readings from their radio receivers.

A character is spaghettified in High Life. It happens towards the end. After she is harvested, impregnated, soaked in breast milk, nearly raped, slapped around, and called an insulting name – she offs herself by leaping into a black hole. She doesn’t leap exactly. What she does is, she hijacks a space craft (a small craft which one drives like a go-kart). She cracks the pilot over the head with a spade (the pilot’s brains splay out like intestines) and then makes away with the go-kart spaceship. At first she’s laughing. After all, she is where no one else had been before – an explorer, an adventurer. Then her face begins to change. The mouth is pulled to one side. The cheek to another. She makes grunting noises, like one exposed to great tearing pressure. Then her head explodes.

In the spaceship, they ate soft vegetable soups.

What is space? By rights, there are times when I doubt that it exists.

One gets lonely all alone. One gets lonelier than lymph, a vital fluid no one talks about.

I had been talking to my grandmother. Our conversation was enabled by globe-spanning satellite networks and regimes of power decades (and more) in the making.

Consider a song by Daft Punk. Put on their album RAM.

A violent storm begins, full of lightning and wind.

The visualizations of space in High Life are animated effects. Colored swirls and strobing lights stand in for things that can’t be said. These are cheap effects. They don’t connote (except to designate the unsaid). I much prefer an earlier move. There is a moment, very early in the film, when a character (a man named Monte, whom the others call a monk) drops a spanner from his perch atop the spaceship. He had been performing mechanical repairs, tightening lug nuts and such. Then he knocks, by mistake, a spanner off the side of the ship. He begins to lunge after it – then stops. The spanner falls an infinite fall. Slowly and steady, at one even rate, it falls into the unrelieved black. There is no depth to its fall. No background against which to sense it. It becomes, to the poor stricken character and also to us, as flat as a cardboard cutout, dimensionless as a video game. It is an effect of the mind to derealize what it can’t understand. And it can’t understand an object falling outside of time.

Sensations of scale.

The near-vertigo of scale.

A storm in space would be an invisible, battering, particulate wind.

I would eat an apple in it.

Drop the core down your rotten throat.

The girl I loved would not be here. She would not be anywhere at all.

Not in the gaps of each synapse, virulent and spreading, more motile than bacterial fins.

There are some people – some actors – who are, how should we say this, soaked in such charisma – such personal force – their aura is so reaching and strong – that the hand simply itches to photograph them. Even the camera wants it. The camera itself wants to film them.

Buster Keaton for instance, have you seen him? Getting repeatedly hit on the head with the spinning handle of a well. He doesn’t look like much. He looks like another grain of sand from the desert behind him.

Or Robin Williams. He is a better example. The flickering of that fluid, vital face.

High Life is less frightening than Solaris and less infinite. In its center is a specter of sex; this specter inaugurates, inside the film, another film.

The split of a schizo, hapless structure.

Or the passage, unmarked, of fear between my breath.

My teeth. Your hands.

My teeth, carious. My hands, removed by your sparkling blade.

Ali Raz is co-author, with Vi Khi Nao, of Human Tetris (2020, 11:11 Press), a kooky collection of sex ads. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the LA Review of Books, The Believer, 3:AM Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Firmament, and elsewhere. Her first novella, Alien, comes out in Spring 2022 from 11:11 Press.

Three Poems

by Peter Markus

The Song and the River

The days pile up, one on top
of the other, until we are standing
on top of a mountain looking
out at a sky with no sun or moon.
Not even the stars ask who we are.
Even the sound of our own voice
inside our head belongs to a stranger.
When we try to remember or say
our name we are left with a silence.
When you reach out for the wing
of a passing blackbird it turns away.
Its black eye says to you not yet.
Below there is a crack in the earth
that turns out to be a river. Too deep
to walk across and with a current
too swift to swim, you wait to see
if maybe a boat might take you.
When no boat comes you walk back
home to the bed by the window
with a view of the river. You climb
back into the quiet. Across the river
the tallest point us a smokestack
that no longer belches gray smoke.
Beneath your bed pillow is a stone
you placed in your pocket years ago
during one of your many walks
along the river. Stones are prayers,
are songs only the birds can hear
when they take us up on their backs
to carry us home. Home, my father
likes to say. I want to go home.
You are home, I say. Maybe he sees
the mountain and the blackbird.
Maybe the stranger’s voice is his own,
in the silence, singing him home.

Sheepshead

The sheepshead floating on the surface
of the river was dead, its one eye staring up
at the sun. I rowed my little boat by it
just to make sure and to take a second look.
It was dead, its one eye staring at the sun.
Some things don’t have to be looked at
more than once. When I was a boy I liked
to take a walking stick to all the things dead
on the side of the road. When I say things
what I mean to say is dogs, cats, deer, raccoons,
not to mention the crows and other birds
that like to eat other dead things on the side
of the road. When my father died I stood
off to the side of his bed to watch my mother
kiss his face and run her fingers through his hair.
Two hours later a woman with a stethoscope
listened to hear a heartbeat. There was none.
He was dead. It was official. This we already knew.
We dressed him one last time: a clean blue shirt.
A pair of underpants he hadn’t worn in three years.
Gray sweats. I shaved his face. We washed his body
until it was as clean as a dead body needs to be.
The dead sheepshead that I rowed past on the river
had lost any hint of silver it once had. My father turned
to wood for the fire that would turn his bones to dust.
I carry him with me everywhere I go, everywhere I look.
I see him in the sky and in the river. The sheepshead
floating on its side, some part of it still impossibly alive.

On the Other Side of the River

What happens on the other side of the river
stays on the other side of the river. Just as when
the dead are taken away they do not return
looking as they once did. There are birds
and fish both of which sometimes wash ashore
no longer able to fly or swim. The dead
in their most silent form, with no song other
than what words we might say of them.
I have no more songs other than this.
These hands that reach down into the mud
to hold them one last time, before I put them back
where I found them, and then walk away.
Making a humming sound only I can hear.

Peter Markus is the author of the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as the collections of short fiction We Make Mud and The Fish and the Not Fish, all published by Dzanc Books. Other books include Good, Brother and The Singing Fish, both published by Calamari Press. When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds, his debut book of poems, will be published in September by Wayne State University Press.