Pangyrus

“‘The Wind || A Dream’ is in a form I call ‘translated from the English,’ which is a contrapuntal structure arranged in two columns, the left column containing the original text and the right column containing the translation from the English. The poem should be read initially down each column, then again row by row across columns. Unlike some contrapuntal poems in the literature, this form is supposed to make sense when read across columns. The structure is meant to explore the translation of meaning by association, and the creation of emergent meaning when read row by row together. Many of my poems in this form have one side dominated by nature, and the other side dominated by human psychology. In this poem, ‘The Wind || A Dream’, the storm and the dream become metaphors for each other, both emerging a bit more supernatural,” — John K. Kruschke on his poem “The Wind || A Dream.”

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Image by Joshua Lucchese on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“He puts his hands on his hips, trying to mask his annoyance. ‘So, what exactly do you want?’

I’m not sure. I am 15. All I know is I want a cool jacket, because I want to be cool, because I’m not.

Which is why on this sharp, early September Saturday, I am shopping for a fall jacket for the start of the school year that already started two weeks ago, in this discount department store, with my guardian and my broken mother, having already made the rounds of several other clothing stores and sportings goods stores, some cooler than others, mostly not cool at all, in all the neighboring towns. I don’t want to be shopping for this, or anything this essential, with my guardian, who is patient and bored and aloof, and my mother, whose brain bled out three years ago, who is not patient, who is limping behind us like a lost kid in the men’s department calling out, ‘Ethaaaaan?…. What about this?’ which is mortifying because now everyone is looking at the source of her inappropriately loud voice and thumping gait as she walks with her cane and now everyone glares as she flick … flick … flicks her cigarette lighter and hobbles to catch up. They notice her, and by association, notice me. Us,” — an excerpt from Ethan Gilsdorf’s essay “Members Only.”

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Image by Antoni Shkraba on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“An ardent student of Shakespeare (through studies both academic and dramatic), I realized while writing this nasty-ass poem how much better Shakespeare volleys insults (and words in general) than do I. And there those words are — in the public domain — ours for the taking. I had fun mixing up my words with Shakespeare’s without obviating whose were whose. My intention was to weave plenty of humor into an angry screed,” — Lillo Way on her poem “Thank you.”

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Image credits: “Falstaff in the Laundry Basket” painted by Henry Fuseli, 1792, and photographed by Alex-David Baldi on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“Here are two of the references included in various drafts of the poem as it developed over a period of years.

1. The daughter of Jairus, presumed dead, then brought back to life. ‘The child is not dead—she is only sleeping!’ (Mark 5:36).

2. The painting of ‘The Procuress,’ by Vermeer. Suggesting a buyer, a seller, and a go-between.

Neither remain in the final version, but influence it, providing insights into the persona who on some level suspects, but cannot understand, something bad must have happened to her. That she was not sleeping.

What will she do with this suspicion, envisioning a mother who not only refuses to protect her but is part of the plan? The child does what she knows best, lifts off from her skin and floats,” — Elisabeth Murawski on her poem “Cicero, IL.”

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Image by engin akyurt on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“We go to look at apartments where we’ll never live together. We look at the kitchen where we won’t cook together, the living room, where we won’t have a fight, the balcony from where we won’t be watching together how the neighbors’ cat squeezes through the fence. We open the kitchen cupboards, slide our hands over the cooking top, ask how much the annual electricity and gas bills are, what’s included in the condo fees, which we won’t pay for together,” — an excerpt from Anita Harag’s story “The Essentials,” translated from Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess. Original text available on our website.

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Image by Rafael Rodrigues on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“That same month, when it is hot where we are in Texas but not so hot where your family lives, just miles away from where Khalil Gibran once lived in Lebanon, your hometown in the mountains is bombed by an airstrike.

You tell me in the car on the way to lunch. It is already night where your parents and sisters are, your nieces and nephews. The strike flattened a building in Aitou and blew apart the trails nearby where you once walked with your friends as a kid. The people who died, at least 22 of them, you don’t know. But in your mind, their bodies could have been your body and the bodies of family.

It’s the first time I’ve seen you like this. Hands holding the wheel so tight they turn white. Lungs refusing the air. A day does not pass without the throb of distance, of uncertainty. You’ve chosen this life in Texas, this path to your ambition, this story of becoming for a hardworking neurology resident born in a country thousands of miles away. But you spend nights with your eyes shut, deep in life’s longing for itself, conjuring the faces of your parents, your sisters so you will never forget.

If anything happens to them, you say, the rest of the sentence hanging in silence,” — an excerpt from Erin Winsemans’ essay “The Gift.”

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Image by Laurent Tironi on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“Before Israel’s October 2023 assault on Gaza and escalation of genocide of Palestinians, I saw a news photo of an enormous bomb on a bed in an apartment in Gaza. (Now, with nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million displaced and 75,000+ people dead, that image of limited devastation is old history.)

I often use the persona poem to grapple with what is beyond my experience or understanding. Here, inside the horror of endless nights that bring threat not relief, vulnerability not protection, the three voices are unified in their fear and helplessness,” — Denise Bergman on her poem “Night.”

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Image by Bill Rand on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

We’re open for submissions! We hope to read your poetry, fiction, and nonfiction as well as see your visual art. Please see our Submittable page for guidelines (link in our bio).

We are proud to feature all accepted work on our website. In addition, we select some work to feature in our print anthology. Our 15th print issue has as its theme UNDERCURRENTS. We’re looking for fiction, nonfiction, memoir, graphic work, and poetry that cracks open the surface and gives us a glimpse of the unseen forces — emotional, historical, interpersonal, demiurgic — at work.

*Just a reminder that we pay our authors, $30 upon publication ✍️

“My father once told me a good man has no enemies, but I’ve got a bit of a nemesis. It’s not that I’m a hateful person, per se. Hardly so. Still, I found myself sitting at my desk, wishing ill upon her perfect blonde locks, her straight white teeth, her spreadsheet view of the world. If a colleague were to ask who’d misspelled the intern’s name, or why a deadline was missed, I would lie without hesitation that it was Madeline’s fault. No one else saw her the way I did, so I had to help them.

It started during the pandemic. Our tech giant, like all others, became self-conscious overnight about the tsunami of white men on its payroll. The weekly demands on ketchup and mayonnaise in our once-bustling cafeteria should’ve been some indication, but no matter.

A woman of ambiguous race, our very own Vin Diesel, was appointed the Head of DEI. The white guy who appointed her mandated she set up a cohort of young and diverse leaders across the firm, each of whom were appointed by other white guys. We, the young and diverse, called it being ‘voluntold,’” — an excerpt from Abhijith Ravinutala story “Happy Friday.”

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Image by Ged Carroll on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

“Summer sun compressed the neighborhood into a stillness between noon and 3 p.m., when I had to be home so that my father could sleep for his third shift. Until then, two silver Huffy bikes adorned the front walkway to my friend Antoine’s house, halfway between the sidewalk and the stoop where we sat swishing and clicking LEGO bricks for what felt like hours until we found the right pieces in the right color.

Elsewhere on our block in the Chicago suburbs, the occasional interlude: a basketball pulsed pavement then clunked on a rim. Bass gurgled from a passing car, vibrations wiggling windows in repeating patterns of home architecture. Then quiet again with the exception of the bricks clattering and scattering as we made our latest custom creations. On other days, we’d link up with Chris to stand sentry on opposite sides of the street and toss a football back and forth. Or maybe we were the ones thumping our hoop dreams into Chris or Antoine’s driveways, where they inched the rims closer to the sky each time to encourage our prepubescent bodies to stretch into a frame more fit for Jordan or Kobe, rock in hand, reaching toward the sun,” — an excerpt from Quintin Collins’ essay “When Another Brick Clicks Into Place.”

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Image by City of Boston Archives on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.