A translation by poetry alum Abigail Wender recently appeared in No Man’s Land. Read an excerpt of “Who, If I Cried Out?” by Iris Hanika, below:

Who, If I Cried Out?

[trans. Abigail Wender]

WHEN ROXANA GOT HOME, she heard voices in the kitchen, and when she hung her keys by the door and carried her shopping into the room, she saw a new face — and the world’s hammer struck destiny’s gong or the opposite, destiny’s hammer struck the world’s gong. Either way, at that moment everything changed. One could say it was as if she’d sustained an electric shock that brought her body to the limit of its electrical capacity; or as if the planet had suddenly changed direction, which made her head spin. One could also say that the earth broke open and hellfire blazed up her legs, or the heavens opened and divine rays of light blinded her. A comet struck earth; the ice cracked wide under her feet; she had been hurled into a new universe; Albert Speer’s Schwerbelastungskörper had fallen on her head —

something of that sort. Put simply, in the instant she saw the new face, a guillotine was released, its knife making a precise cut that marked an epoch of her life. From then on there was a before and after, and she would always know the exact moment in which her life had been radically altered: when I came home after shopping, he sat in the kitchen, and from then on everything was different.

“Hello, here you are,” was what greeted her. “Roxana, this is Josh.” He stood up immediately (“Josh, this is Roxana”), beamed at her and held out his hand to pull her from the before into the after. But it was not so easy to grasp that hand — nothing was normal now and even the smallest action required careful thought and planning before it could be undertaken.

First she needed to put down her groceries. And for that she had to turn away from this new person, and that took some time because she wanted nothing more from life than to look at that face forever. With effort, she spun around to put her bag on the counter between the stove and refrigerator. At last her hands were free, and she turned and took his hand, which pulled her safely and definitively into the hereafter — which quickly changed into the never-ending present.

“Hello,” he said, “I’m Josh.”

“Hello,” she said, “Roxana. My pleasure.” She didn’t let go of his hand immediately in order to completely absorb the face that everything now would depend on. And yet she couldn’t see the face clearly as it was a bit too near for her age-related, weak eyesight. So she let go of his hand and put her glasses on to study it exactly. She saw all his pores, lines, hair, and bumpy skin very distinctly. But that didn’t help a bit, it was just a face. Except it tunneled through her to a place that she hadn’t known was still there. She took the glasses off and Josh’s face changed back into a young prince’s.

Read this work in its entirety here: https://www.no-mans-land.org/article/who-if-i-cried-out/

Chloe Martinez, a 2009 poetry alum, was recently featured in Radar, Boulevard, On the Seawall, and Black Warrior Review. Read an excerpt of Martinez’ poem “alarmingly humanoid sheep” below:

alarmingly humanoid sheep

[Ghent Altarpiece, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 15th c.]

The mystic lamb is looking at you. His eyes
face you as human eyes do, and he stands with a cheerful

blood-spurt coming from his chest. Something of a dance
in his four cloven feet. Golden light-rays all around his head.

Is there wind? The angels’ wings are held lightly behind them
like expensive accessories. The mystic lamb says, hey,

says, all eyes on me. He’s right. Right at the center. He’s
talking to you. Are you afraid? he asks, reading your mind.

Read this poem in its entirety, as well as two others, here: https://www.radarpoetry.com/issue-31-toc

2018 poetry alum Shannon Winston was recently featured in The Shore. Read an excerpt of “Mustard Seed” below:

Mustard Seed

A girl glues a mustard seed to white draft paper.
She steps back to admire her work. This is my origin story,
she announces to her art teacher who will never understand her.
Later, she adds blue-eyed grasses and black hawthorn.

She steps back to admire her work. This is my origin story.
Chatter about the timid, rootless girl fills the halls.
Later, she adds: Blue-eyed grasses + black hawthorn
= my body. In my gut, that’s where alfalfa sprawls
.

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://www.theshorepoetry.org/shannon-k-winston-mustard-seed

2018 poetry alum Shannon Winston was recently featured in On the Seawall. Read an excerpt of “The Supermarket” below:

The Supermarket

When I read the cashier’s name tag — Penelope —
I think: she must be so lonely. She scans my almond butter,
and I imagine her response: I’m not your cliché.

Avocados wobble like Russian nesting
dolls across the conveyer belt,
along with chia seeds and refried beans.

When she grabs my oranges in their green plastic
netting with her knotted hands, does she think of weaving?
Some stitches let the light through,

others are wound so tightly they cut
her circulation off where she’s bitten her nails
down to the cuticle. There’s something about the slow sweep

of her arm: how easily she brushes away time,
and grief, slowly, deliberately, as if she has nowhere to be…

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://www.ronslate.com/the-supermarket/

Andy Young (Poetry ’11) was recently featured in Under a Warm Green Linden. Read an excerpt of “To Your Most Excellent Health” below:

To Your Most Excellent Health

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://www.greenlindenpress.com/issue12-andy-young

Fiction alum Robert Fromberg was recently featured in Bullshit Lit. Read an excerpt of “The First Time He Said That Word” below:

The First Time He Said That Word

Wait, what is that expression on his face as he settles into the highbacked seat at the head of the conference table? We struggle to define it. We settle on this: self-satisfied yet expectant, as though the first pitch of the season has not been thrown, but he already sees himself being carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates after winning the World Series, really singlehandedly, but good of his teammates to keep him company and offer their whoops, their hollers, their shoulders.

And what is he wearing? Around his neck and over his sports jacket, we see a scarf. A sharp one, we must admit, $340 worth of muted colors and wool as smooth as a puppy’s belly. But a scarf at a business meeting? Absolutely unheard of in the history of business meetings, at least any we have attended. But if anyone can pull it off, he can.

Do you want to know what mastery looks like? It looks like a short man relaxing in a highbacked conference room chair without his head being thrust awkwardly forward because it rests too low on a curved seatback designed for a taller person. We fellow smaller men around the table have tried and failed to accomplish this for years, while we women have never enjoyed the luxury of allowing ourselves to lean back in a conference room, and if any people of color or nonbinary sexual orientation were among us…well, none are. No wonder we attend to this man, no wonder we align (one of his favorite words) our followership with his leadership.

We all know something is coming. What? we ask ourselves, knowing it is beyond our station to answer such a question. When? we ask ourselves, knowing that our role is only to wait. We slide back from the edge of our seats. Such an act we are putting on in this conference room, pretending we are not as excited as a group of people in a conference room could be.

There! A pause between sentences. A slight lift of his eyebrows. A leaning forward from his relaxed position against the chairback. As if he is a general in an air-conditioned room far from the front line preparing to order an invasion, a director on a 1950s film set ready to shout “action,” a 21-year-old protester who later in life will become an ad man pulling back his arm before tossing a Molotov cocktail. We glance toward one another to see if we all have caught the signal. We have.

Read this piece in its entirety here: https://www.bullshitlit.com/post/the-first-time-he-said-that-word-by-robert-fromberg

Poetry faculty member and 1990 alum Daniel Tobin was recently featured in Plume. Read an excerpt of Tobin’s work below:

A Brief Portfolio

From “AT THE GRAVE OF TEILHARD DE CHARDIN”

(Fan and Spearhead)

Marguerite Teilhard de Chambon

Like conifers in the Bois de Boulogne where he would walk
dreaming of Auvergne, home, the massif of Puy-de-Dome
long before his exile east, that’s how he envisioned the rise,

this progressive genesis of the universe, and of the human
phenomenon, across the fraught, material frontier into life,
and life, fanning, groping—directed chance—into thought.

When he would visit Clermont-Ferrand, my dearest cousin,
as a child, he would carry frogs for study into his bedroom.
Years later, I invited him to Rue de Fleurus, to my Institute

to school my girls on evolution, never mind what he called
“the cage of dogma,” mindful instead of truth’s “axis,”
and him knowing as I do–despite my male nom de plume

the need to feminize the species. From the front, then,
he wrote to me of blasted ridges, of poplar trees misted
with gas, of this world recasting itself anew through battle.

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://plumepoetry.com/a-brief-portfolio-3/

Hannah Silverstein, a 2021 poetry graduate, was recently featured in the Cider Press Review. Read an excerpt of Silverstein’s poem below:

MRI With Enameled Buffalo Horn

(After “Monarch Buffalo Horn Cup,” a sculpture by Kevin Pourier)

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://ciderpressreview.com/cpr-volume-23-5/mri-with-enameled-buffalo-horn/

2017 poetry alum Amanda Newell was recently featured in Rattle. Read an excerpt of “Still Attached” below:

Still Attached

His foot, cast and wrapped

in gauze, toes sprouting

like sun-scorched weeds—

not even the worst

of what he refuses to call

his combat injuries,

since he was never in

actual combat, unworthy

of the Purple Heart merely

for being in the driver’s seat.

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://www.rattle.com/still-attached-by-amanda-newell/

Fiction alum Candace Walsh was recently featured in the LEON Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “Aging Out” below:

Aging Out (an excerpt from the novel in progress Cleave)

Franks and beans, canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Tuna noodle casserole, served in a series of chipped plates and bowls. If she was the eldest child in a foster home, she cooked. If someone else was older than her, she didn’t have to, but would clear the table or sweep the floor. She noticed how lazy girls got the boot, unless they got by in other ways.

How many houses had she lived in before aging out? The thick file under her bed could tell her, but she let the onionskin paper, index cards, triplicate layers, scalloped letters, clippings, and charts seethe in silence. They didn’t reveal the details of her life before child protective services took her away on the grounds of neglect. 

Veronica’s body kept secrets from her mind, but sometimes dropped hints. She didn’t like to see electrical cords slithering around on the floor, preferring to coil and tuck them behind furniture. She startled easily, at worst emitting raw little shrieks that gave way to fury. She rarely experienced an emotional tie with another person without wanting to stickily garland it with sex. If friendship was a house, none of Veronica’s rooms had doors. Even…no, especially if it was inappropriate. She must have released some etheric semaphore the vulpine teachers and dads of high school friends used to pick up on. And now that she was well into her twenties, she ended up in bed with friends’ husbands. In confidence, over tea, her friends disclosed good and bad qualities, best and worst moments, raciest requests. They were vetted. Nose hairs trimmed. Underwear clean.

These husbands emitted an ursine domesticity she liked to banish, to remind them of what they really were. As good as their opportunities. Panting, filthy, potent. When her friends told her their husbands were suddenly so much better in bed, she felt a mix of benevolence and pride. She’d almost roll her eyes and say, “You’re welcome.”  And best of all, if they ever got crosswise with her, she could detonate the truth with a smile.

But now that she had been born again in Pastor Steve’s church, the mars in her virtue had been washed clean by the blood of the lamb.

Read this piece in its entirety here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/issue-11-candace-walsh/