Author: Roxane Gay

Family Romance, by Tom Bradley, with Art by Nick Patterson (A Review by Ally Nicholl)

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jadedibisproductions.com

Full Color Bleed
$49.00/246 pages

Black & White Bleed on White
$16.99/246 pages


Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Bizarro fiction. A relatively new genre, it bills itself as the cult section of the literary world and boasts titles such as Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, Shatnerquake and The Haunted Vagina (all of which, frankly, sound like contenders for Best Book Ever.)

The Bizarro movement exists to provide literature for lovers of weird reads, and reads surely don’t come much weirder than Family Romance, by Tom Bradley and visual artist Nick Patterson. Taking Patterson’s deviantArt as a starting point, Bradley has fashioned a darkly humorous, sexually perverse and satisfyingly gruesome tale of life in and around a none-more-dysfunctional family.

As mysterious creatures eavesdrop at the window, Mom fills her children’s heads with ludicrous doctrine and instils fear of the pathogens that can attach themselves to the back of your head and make you sneeze so hard it blows your whole face off (the ‘Sneeze Catastrophic’). Dad, meanwhile, has abandoned his family and his religion and joined the side of the Relic Amalekites, heathens who are said to wipe their assholes with both hands and worship false deities. Little Sissy swears Dad is buried in the garden; but then, she hasn’t been quite right in the head since her visit from the Grand Religiopath. Continue reading →

Brink by Shanna Compton (A Review by Anne Champion)

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Bloof Books

86 pages/$15.00

 

Shanna Compton’s Brink is part one of a two part poetry collection: Brink and The Seam. Both embody the realm of speculative poetry with their focus on fantastic, science fiction themes. In an interview, Compton describes Brink as “before”and The Seam as “after.”  Presumably, with the themes alluded to in Brink, we can infer that this means pre-apocalypse and post apocalypse poetry. In Brink, Compton flirts with disaster on every page, constantly teetering on the edge of complete chaos and devastation.

Compton, who has authored several full length poetry collections and chapbooks including For Girls & Others and Down Spooky, mixes the mundane alongside the fantastic in this collection. Mars and other planets are referenced in medias res of a couple’s arguments, shoplifting, and the common aches for adoration and perfection within the human condition. In this way, the poems suggest a futuristic landscape while also seeming so familiar that they hint towards the anxiety of a doomed future being much nearer than we would like to conceive. In ‘Panoramic View,’ Compton writes:

 Last week Mars suddenly got a lot closer.

It used to be the place we’d throw out

as impossible, utterly unreachable, so red

and foreign and sere. Not anymore….

It’s bluer than I thought, attained. Like most things

I wish we could take back.

 

Here is a prime example of how Compton can mingle the otherworldly alongside the common stings of this world. The inhuman and the human reflect upon each other through warped telescopes, revealing all sorts of surprises and similarities. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room with Rae Gouirand

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Won’t you join us and make a murderous face with Rae Gouirand as she discusses the interesting blurriness of whether it’s better to be understood or to be loved (see her poem In Lieu of Questions in our Jan Issue).

1) Reading your poem makes me feel like I woke up much earlier than normal on a summer morning and it feels like I’m on vacation, but I know I have to go to work in a few hours. Why do I feel that way?

Because nothing happens, or has happened. Though it might at some point. But that doesn’t matter. The stakes have dissolved. There’s a private threshold. Because both late night and earlyearly morning are times of attention, and interesting blurriness, and privacy. The poem observes a passing moment. Time keeps passing, but not without recognition. It has a nonspecific quality to it not because it’s nonspecific, but because the aperture’s open.

2) What are the questions you can’t stop asking yourself?

There’s a poem in my first book called ‘Hearsay’ about a conversation I had with a close friend years ago on the subject of whether it’s better to be understood or to be loved. Though I know my answer to that question, and have for a long time, I find that lots of things in daily experience remind me that it’s there.

How many variations on the first Venn diagram that comes to mind exist for any of the many things I’m orbiting around each other in the ongoing three-dimensional drawing room of my head.

What is possible. How to do it. What matters. What fire is made of.

Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Cameron Walker

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This Saturday, a spark from the past. Cameron Walker’s ‘Ripening‘ graced our September issue with its magical presence; here, she talks about mothermagic, people changing into food, and the words that make things hurt.

1. There are certain words in this story that make it especially devastating. For example, “When she thinks I’m asleep, she cradles me in her arms and whispers that even if I become beautiful, she’ll never let anyone hurt me.” Tell me about this even. Are beautiful people meant to be hurt?

First, I have the very odd feeling that I might get these questions wrong, even though I should probably know the answers, right? I think because they are very good questions. And because I haven’t had to take a test in a long time.

I think I first was thinking about the “if” of that sentence, that the mother isn’t sure this daughter will ever become beautiful in the same way that her sister was. And she’s relieved. And she’s feeling guilty that she did let something happen to her beautiful daughter. (And the narrator sort of accepts this about herself. I’ve been reading a lot about siblings recently, and how parents put them in particular roles- and even if she does become beautiful, I don’t think either she or her mother will think of her this way.)

But the “even,” that’s what you asked about. I’m not sure, but I imagine that at first, the mother felt threatened by her beautiful daughter, and the threat made her hesitate to protect her. She won’t hesitate again, not with this child.

2. It can take almost two years to grow an edible pineapple. What are the key growth years for humans? When do we “push out roots”?

Oh, I hope we never stop pushing out roots, don’t you? Continue reading →

jimmy lagowski saves the world by Pat Pujolas (a Review by David S. Atkinson)

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Independent Talent Group

198 pgs/$12

When I first picked up jimmy lagowski saves the world, the short story collection debut by Pat Pujolas, I was expecting to read a funny little book. Really, that’s all I’d thought from the summary on the back. The twin epigraphs hadn’t really changed my mind, the first being the quote “All men are created equal” from Thomas Jefferson and the second, attributed to the character Jimmy Lagowski himself, being “Thomas Jefferson was a dick.” After reading one or two stories, however, I decided that jimmy lagowski saves the world was a collection that evokes tender emotion through the bare humanity of the characters. This bit from “State Park Resort” is a perfect example:

A few hours later, he emerges from the arts and crafts barn, victorious. She’s going to love this dog, this gift from Henry. In his excitement, he runs down the dusty road, past the game-room, past the other campers and tents, all the way to the Martin Family’s camper. Joann is eating lunch at the picnic table, and Henry runs to her side, presenting the dog to her, with both hands, like a trophy.

*****

“It’s so adorable,” Joann says. “I’m going to call him Henry.”

A knife, straight to the heart; his cheeks fill with blood again.

Joann pats the statute on its head. “Good little Henry. He’s a good little boy.”

Inside, Henry thinks, don’t call it that. Please don’t call it that. Call it anything in the worlds but that. Inside, this is what Henry thinks.

 

In short, a twelve-year-old boy makes himself vulnerable in a valiant and creative attempt to win the young girl he loves, only to have her unwittingly demonstrate that she considers more of a friendly puppy than a suitor. Continue reading →

The Light and the Dark, by Mikhail Shishkin, trans from Russian by Andrew Bromfield (A Review by Helen McClory)

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Quercus

368 pgs/£14.44

The Light and the Dark is an epistolary novel – as soon as I opened the book and caught on to that, I thought of the 18th, 19th century. I thought, uncharitably, I was in for turgid romance. Or Dracula. But reading was another matter – there was the whiplash to deal with, of being thrown into the claustrophobic heart of the story, and there was the sparking, glorious prose.

The story is a love story of two sweethearts separated and writing back and forth to one another, recounting their happy moments and their present discomforts and biting loneliness. The lovers are Volodenka, a soldier in an unnamed, but clearly not modern conflict, and Sashenka, the young woman who waits at home. Here she recounts their time at their dachas in the countryside, where they met:

And the smells from the garden! So rich and dense, like fine particles saturating the air. You could pour those smells into a cup like strong tea.

And everything all around has only one thing on its mind – I simply walk through the field or the forest and absolutely everyone tries his very best to pollinate or inseminate me. My socks are just covered in grass seeds.

And remember, we found a hare in the grass with its legs cut off by a mowing machine.

Brown-eyed cows.

Little goat nuts lying on the path.

Our pond – murky on the bottom with blooming slush, full of frogspawn. Silver carp butting at the sky. I climb out of the water and pluck the weed off myself.

I lay down to sunbathe and covered my face with my singlet, the wind rustles like starched linen. And suddenly there’s a ticklish feeling in my navel, and it’s you pouring a thin stream of sand onto my stomach out of your fist.

The detail is thick, romantic with both a small and large r, but this feels valid for what lovers, nineteenth century, early twentieth perhaps, would write. They would see the exuberance of nature as a mirror to their own currently unfulfilled desires. And when Volodenka writes of the landscapes of war, he appends them with qualifiers of love. War and distance can only be endured because of the continued existence of Sashenka in the world.  Continue reading →

The February, Almost March Dispatch

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February is almost gone. In PANK land, at least in my neck of its woods, that means three things: Blizzards, NEA grant writing, and prepping for AWP. Sigh.

Blizzards shouldn’t be news in the winter. It’s one of the things that happen, seasonally appropriate, and our cultural insistence on turning the realities of weather into news annoys me to no end. I’m not saying hurricanes, tornadoes, dust storms, and blizzards aren’t a hassle, but so is pooping, pain, and dying- inevitable, often grim realities, all, to be faced down as best we might and preferably without the constant histrionics. In other words, get over it, for crying out loud. That said, we got a doozy of a snowstorm in Houghton, Michigan, this week. The upshot is this: They’re turning one of the downtown streets into a sled run; and I was locked indoors long enough to finish writing a grant proposal for NEA.

A NEA grant proposal, you say? What for, you ask?

Let me lay it out for you like this: In 2014 PANK will begin paying all of its magazine contributors, both online and in print. The question at this point is not if or when, but how much? There are a number of obstacles to overcome yet, but the foundation is laid, and you’ll be hearing more from us on the subject in the coming months. In the meantime, if you want to help, subscribe to the magazine, use the tip jar when submitting, or consider giving a donation. It’s apparently a hard pill to swallow in the literary community, particularly in the small press and literary magazine corner of the cosmos, but you don’t get something for nothing. Remember that obnoxious trucker hat slogan: Grass, gas, or ass: nobody rides for free? There’s a nugget of truth there. Continue reading →

It’s Almost March and All That Crazy but I Would Like to Introduce You to February

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Have you seen our February Issue? Dependent on approach and disposition it may eat you alive or you will eat it alive all the same.

From Nuncio Casanova there are giraffes and illustration and collage and story.

Jenny Sadre discusses the biographies of teenagers and what we should write “before what happens to us.”

Bret Shepard describes parts of humanity in “Place Where Presence Was.”

As long as you’re his enemy, Alexander Lumans does not wish these plagues upon you.

I’ll leave the rest to your exploration.

Adam and Eve Redux: A Pop Quiz

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1. In the beginning, there was
a.) A pink tow truck.

b.) Nothing but sawmills and hay far as the eye can see, save for the Burger King, of course.

c.) Well, there was whatever there was, you know? Some say there was only algae. It was a different era.

2. Then somehow, a man got there. How do you reckon he managed that?

a.) Probably saw something he wanted to screw, easy. How do men get anywhere?

b.) He probably asked directions. Otherwise he might’ve gotten himself lost at an intersection. It’s the danger in not having a map. Just think what would’ve happened to the human race if the first man had got himself stopped behind a tree, or cracked his tail bone trying to scale a mountain.

c.) Doesn’t matter how slow he got there, long as he didn’t stop.

3. Let’s say, hypothetically, the woman wasn’t made til five hours later. How did the first man keep his mind off things?

a.) A man buck naked and all alone. Ha, good question. Why don’t you ask your uncle Jimbob?

b.) Maybe he was learning to swim. Else he was learning how to chew off apple skins. Else he was praying O God Thank You For This Absurd New Self and Situation, But I Don’t Know What To Do With It. Else he was teaching his throat to sing river songs. Else he was taking the world’s first nap.

c.) Nothing much to take his mind off in the first place. It was a different era. Continue reading →

Could You Be With Her Now, Two Novellas by Jen Michalski (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

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Dzanc

$15.95/ 180 pgs.

“The novella,” Ian McEwan writes, “is the perfect form of prose fiction.” And yet, McEwan laments in his short essay, ‘Some Notes on the Novella,’ published in The New Yorker last October, an overwhelming number of writers find themselves “slaves to the giant” i.e. the novel – “instead of masters of the form.”

Not so Jen Michalski.

Michalski, a Baltimore-based writer and editor, knows exactly what she is doing when it comes to choosing form to suit a particular narrative function. The author of two short story collections, From Here, and Close Encounters, her first novel, The Tide King won the 2012 Big Moose Prize and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press this spring. In the meantime, last month Dzanc Books released Could You Be With Her Now, a stunning pair of disparate but resonant novellas that showcase not only her enormous range but also the form in its tidy splendor.

While on the surface these works seems worlds apart, emotionally the characters are united by loss, alienation, and their desire to be understood. At the center of it all is Michalski’s masterful hand, at once compassionate and unflinching, possessed of extraordinary, aesthetic restraint. What she has given us are two lean bodies of incredible depth and ambition. Compression wins out at every turn, so that each word feels integral, without sacrificing her tremendous ear for language. The umbrella title for the two novellas, Could You Be With Her Now, comes from a line in the second pertaining to a fleeting, fiery romance with a lover, long dead, and speaks to the ache of impossible love, a current that runs through both stories. Both novellas hinge on the feeling, expressed by Alice, a character from the second novella, May-September:  

Something had been lost, or taken, or was never hers to begin with, even though she realized with a ferocity that she had wanted it more than anything. Continue reading →