Teaching English Lit on the Day After a Shooting

by Craig Beaven

“In this astonishing long poem, Craig Beaven skillfully braids the personal with the political, the lyric with the narrative, and the past with the present. Interrogating whiteness and his own positionality, Beaven says, 'I don’t want history / involved in this / embrace, but history / is involved / in everything.' Beaven’s interest in self investigation is matched by his interest in the textures of sound and language, and by his insistence on finding the precise image to carry the poem forward in surprising ways. Teaching English Lit on the Day After a Shooting has much to offer all of us, alive as we are in a time of so many crises.”

- Ben Gucciardi, author of West Portal

Craig Beaven’s first book of poems, Natural History, won the Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press. The recipient of scholarships and fellowships to The Sewanee Writers Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. His poems have appeared in the Best New Poets anthology, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, artful dodge, Quarterly West, and many others. He lives with his wife and children in Tallahassee, Florida.

Each Lie That Pollutes the Body

by Kevin West

West’s chapbook of poetry is unflinching in its exploration of sexuality and violence, and finds reckoning in the dark. Brutal in the best way. A wreck, a flurry of punches, and you can’t help but watch the whole thing. You can’t help but fall in love with it.

Kevin West is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Texas. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, The Journal, The Boiler, and elsewhere.

The Subject Line Reads

by Blanche Brown

By turns playful and contemplative, Brown’s The Subject Line Reads probes intimacy and the interpersonal in the internet age. Expansive, innovative, captivating. Both an interrogation and a salve for our virtual selves.

Blanche Brown grew up in the Florida panhandle. She currently lives, works, and collaborates with arts and community-based organizations in Philadelphia. Her chapbook, Consider the Oyster, won the 2019 Diagram/New Michigan Press chapbook contest.