Author: apendar

SCR Issue 55.1 includes poetry by Ifeoluwa Ayandele and Elizabeth Erin Smith, with fiction by Glenn Bertram and Banzelman Guret, a translation by Maria José Caro, and a book review by Miriam McEwen.

Contents

Poetry

1 EVELYN OLMOS House of Mirrors

5 KATE GASKIN Multiverse with Boybands and Roses; Poem Beginning with a Phrase from Cosmos

9 AZA PACE The Sorceress

19 IFEOLUWA AYANDELE How You Try to Remove the Soil Buried in Your Fingernails

20 BENJAMIN PALOFF Of Cruelty; That Difficulties Augment Our Desires

22 SARAH BROWNING Quarantine, Middle Days

24 DEE MATTHEWS to tell you three things on my mind is to tell you about quarantine and temperance

32 DAVID ANUAR The Health of Insurance; Axial; She Refuses to Die

47 JESSICA POLI Pennsylvania Backwoods Elegy

49 ERNEST O. ÒGÚNYEMÍ About Weaving

59 NYLAH LYMAN The Beds We Make

61 HALSEY HYER Self-portrait as Interrupted Home Alone (1990) Synopsis

62 SHEERE LA PUMA When the Marriage Was Over

74 RODNEY GOMEZ Desert Cold; You Can Build a Person Out of the Desert

85 ISSA M. LEWIS Learning a Foreign Language

86 ADAM TAVEL The Fury of Paintbrushes

87 WILLIAM FARGASON Elegy with Shadows

100 EMILY PAIGE WILSON Vanity

101 ERIN ELIZABETH SMITH When You Ask If I’m Okay; Skin and Bones

104 BEN KLINE Graveside

116 ELLEN JUNE WRIGHT The Egg

117 GAGE SAYLOR Give Me the Trash-Lined Streets of Philly

118 EMMA AYLOR Absent Prayer

128 DAN FLIEGEL The English

Fiction

2 SETH GLECKMAN Sun God

10 RA ‘NIQUA LEE Tread Softly Here

26 MARIA JOSÉ CARO Beirut

35 DANIEL DONAGHY Underpass

50 BANZELMAN GURET A Plan’s a Plan

63 PATRICK DACEY The Queen Sea

76 ALEKSANDAR STEVIC The Dial Tone

89 THEO YUREVITCH Talisman Magic

106 GLENN BERTRAM The Gig

120 RESHMI HEBBAR Remember That I Am Good

Book Reviews

130 MIRIAM MCEWEN Hearing Voices: The Mystery of Shared Grief in Tracey Lien’s All That’s Left Unsaid

133 STEPHEN D. CALDES Why Tell Tales: A Review of Erin Swan’s Walk the Vanished Earth

137 KEEN BUTTERWORTH A Question of Redemption: Gordon Van Ness’ James Dickey: A Literary Life

141 JASON DURHAM Life Without a Net: Keith Flynn’s and Charter Week’s Prosperity Gospel

Contributors

145

Huan LaPlante (they/them)

Huan grew up on the beaches of North Carolina with an appreciation for art passed down from their mother and grandmother. They graduated from UNC Asheville in 2018 with a BFA in painting and an Undergraduate Research Award for their solo thesis exhibition, “Historically Apathetic”. After graduating, they spent the next two years as a mentor at a residential treatment center for adolescents, also attending artist residencies at Penland School of Craft and Chateau d’Orquevaux. They are currently pursuing their MFA degree in drawing at Clemson University where their studio research analyzes the impermanence of the self through a queer, Buddhist lens. Previously working solely with watercolor, Huan now experiments with a range of ephemeral materials such as charcoal, repurposed fabrics, and handmade recycled paper. Their works have recently been shown at the 701 Contemporary Center for Art South Carolina Biennial and will show at the AXA Art Prize in New York and Lee Gallery, Clemson University in 2022.

Early on in their graduate research, they were very interested in how the self was formed through childhood development and socialization. Mimic references a photo of their mother and a young Huan. The photo is so simple, yet the mirroring of their poses says a lot about how caretakers shape us. How figures complete one another between the play of positive and negative space speaks to a familial dependency. The red thread that wraps their ankles illustrates the relationship that binds.

Check out more of Huan LaPlante’s work here:

Website: huanlaplante.com

Instagram: @huannieo

SCR Issue 54.2 includes poetry by Domenica Martinello, and Despy Boutris, with fiction by Khem K. Aryal, Gionni Ponce, and Katherine Tunning.

Contents

Poetry

1 GALE MARIE THOMPSON Wind Shear

3 DOMENICA MARTINELLO Power Ballad; There’s a Life Inside My Life

19 ELIZABETH LINDSEY ROGERS Fertility Ballad

22 JUSTIN REED No, I Mean I Really Want You to Live Forever

36 KATIE KEMPLE Before I can write about love

50 LILLIAN BERTRAM Money Rules: A Duplex; Anthropocene Money; Colonizer Money

63 STELLA WONG how the HR department responds to a report

64 DAVE NIELSEN How to Make a Hootenanny Pancake

73 MAYA MARSHALL Girl Born with Cleft Palate Turns Ten, Divines for Water in Her Backyard

77 SEBASTIÁN H. PÁRAMO Sobbing in a U-Haul

78 DEPSY BOUTRIS Falling; Breakup Ghazal

102 GEORGIA TIFFANY To Live in That Room

104 ERIKA. LUCKERT Moules Marinères

114 JEFFREY BEAN Love Poem in Quarantine

116 JANE ZWART Poem With a Hole In It

156 MEL RUTH Ridgeway, VA 2008

Fiction

7 HANNAH FEUSTLE If That’s How You Have To Be

24 STEVE ALMOND I’m Not the Only One

39 A.T. BISESI City Lights

54 KHEM. K. ARYAL Shopping for Glasses

65 DOUG RAMSPECK Omens

74 KATHERINE TUNNING The Sofa

81 DEAN TUCK The Amnesiacs

106 GIONNI PONCE The City to See and Be Seen

117 HARRY GORDON Dust

Book Reviews

128 WALT HUNTER A Necessary Language: Tracy K. Smith’s Such Color

131 AMBER LEE Coming to Terms with American Expression of Race: Connor Towne O’Neill’s Down Along with That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy

134 STEPHEN HUNDLEY Daddy’s Rotten Kingdom: Steve Almond’s All the Secrets of the World

Contributors

138

SCR Issue 54.1 includes poetry by Juan Camillo Garza, and Jody Winer, with fiction by Alice Yang, Brock Clarke, and Romina Paredes, and features our Ronald Moran Prize winners Leila Ortiz (Poetry) and Alexandra Watson (Fiction).

Contents

Poetry

1 LEILA ORTIZ Poem in Which a Bird is Never Mentioned

15 JUAN CAMILLO GARZA Lonely Apocalypse of the Heart; The Fisherman

25 JODY WINER Riptide

27 KELSEY CARMODY WORT Postal Service

28 ERIN WILSON Rakes, Kickstands, Freckles; New Moon, Halfway to Winter Solstice

39 G.C. WALDREP The Fern Cliff II (Monazite); The Fern Cliff (III)

41 DARON JOHNSON Mama the Witch Doctor

51 DEVON BALWIT Amanuensis: Notes on Mann’s Doctor Faustus

52 GRACE Q. SONG Donation

64 ALEXIS IVY At the Tejas Rodeo

72 CINDY KING Daily Affirvotions

87 K. IVER Tupelo, MS; [Boy] Meets Them

90 ROBIN GOW rental car; distortion

104 BRIAN CLIFTON It Doesn’t Sound Good At All

119 PJ KRASS Benjamin Franklin’s Returrn

128 ELI COYLE Nocturne

136 TALAL ALYAN Mumbai, 2003

Fiction

3 ALEXANDRA WATSON Even Days

17 CONSTANCE RENFROW Handbook for Demolition Cats

21 BROCK CLARKE Happy Birthday

30 JOSEPHINE SLOYAN Oblivion

42 ROMINA PAREDES Kinstugi

53 STEPHAN ERIK CLARK The Dead Goldfish: A Russian Love Story

65 EVAN J MASSEY Joint Readiness

74 PRISCILLA THOMPSON The Ghost Apple

95 ALICE YANG W*RK

106 KATE KRAUTKRAMER ATS

121 ROBIN VIGFUSSON Going to Hades

131 FRANCIS WALSH How May I Direct Your Call?

Book Reviews

138 MIRIAM MCEWEN Bad Acting: The Many Dark Revelations in Tales the Devil Told Me

140 ANNA BLAKE KEELEY Writing Through the Impossible: Sadie Hoagland’s Strange Children

144 ADRIENNE K. BURRIS “A woman can make a living”:  Heather Herrman’s The Corpse Queen

147 STEVIE EDWARDS Unlearning Shame: Mother Body by Diamond Forde

152 GARY KERLEY Deception, Guilt, and the Search for Racial Redemption in Marlin Barton’s Children of Dust

155 SARAH BLACKMAN The Future Feels Like This: Lance Olsen’s Skin Elegies

Contributors

159

Listen to (or read) student editor, Miciah Pendarvis, interview Steve about his new novel, the long road it took to get here, and his feelings about 80s nostalgia, cheesy pop music, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan, among other topics.