Gulf Coast Online Exclusives


The Trophy

Siamak Vossoughi

I'd never felt so sad engraving a trophy before, like I wanted to throw it away when I was done with it.


Heavy-Headed

Aram Mrjoian

My head often feels filled with concrete. This is not to say congested. If anything, I am rarely sick.

Common Motivations for Teaching English Abroad, or A Short Physics Lesson

Kelly Morse

I’d bicycle home after teaching, pumping the pedals so hard I hoped the blurred street would crack beneath them. I’d learned early how to leap—from hotel maid to fine dining server, student to teacher, dying desert town to rain-drenched city. So I left. I filled out applications, fielded phone interviews, signed a contract and flew to Hanoi, sight unseen.

Bright Perfection

Nancy Au

The chicken crows at midnight. Crows at four o’clock in the morning. Crows when it rains. Crows when the sun sets. Crows when sirens blare down our street. Only stops crowing to eat.

2 Poems

Alyse Bensel

A neighbor assures me not to worry when the dog eats / rabbit flesh flattened on the street. Uncooked bones / are not sharp enough to hurt, turn an animal inside out.


From the Archives

The Evangelist

Kathleen Blackburn

I was twelve, with little idea of the drying sediment, the vanishing well, under my feet, though as far as I could tell West Texas was desert. A shrug in the middle of forgotten. At the time, I feared one thing only: Dad would die because of me.

Silent Guest

Susana Corcuera, trans. Clara Sullivan

Morning comes and he pauses beside my bed. He struggles to breathe, his breath brushing my face. Without opening my eyes, I make a space where he can curl…

Ceremonies

Emma Miao

I don't want to go home. / Crumbled bricks, pamphlets // stained with salt. Mother's / street, black-tarred, whistling, // whistling.

Harborless

John Sibley Williams

If I had known all boats eventually yield / to the current, I would have readied myself / long ago


From the Blog

Losing the Plot: On Lauren Berlant's Desire/Love

In their entry on love, Berlant writes that we tend to (mistakenly) use the objects our desire attaches to in order to assume an identity— “you know who…

Feeling Political

For Berlant, part of the problem of politics is that marginalized people have to accommodate the feelings of their majority counterparts in order to successfully…