Gulf Coast Online Exclusives


The woman says “do not eclipse my pain with your own”

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Shake the rattles of our jazz. / There’s lies in the kitchen too, and they / are how bright. // Twittering, we run run each other, / try on expensive cabinets and hats. // Rough light is in this time. / Withered is the trencher, / so we make a place for mothers / in the house. Twinkle at the time / a clock strikes, a certain time of day, // and I see the chime of the bells, / listen to their whiteblue sound.


Eighty-Three Questions About the Death of De’Sohn Wilson: An Ongoing Investigation

Catina Bacote

Who called Mirrellez C. Elliott and told her that her son had died in police custody? How many minutes did it take for the police to drive De’Sohn from where he was arrested in New Haven to the police station at One Union Avenue?

Pareidolia

Chris Ware

For a while I thought maybe something was wrong with me, like you sort of hope there is when you're a teenager.


Fiction

One White Deer

Kara Vernor

Mom says a white deer means blood is coming. When I sleep, the forest floor is a lake of red, no matter if the deer are white or brown. A gunshot sounds.

Rivals

A. J. Gnuse

By the base of his steps, there was a flower pot with a sad, half-dead plant. She lifted the thing. Felt the small force of its weight against her. Stupid, she knew. But she was a container brimming over. And she needed to let something go.

Medal of Honor

Nghiem Tran

I asked Grandpa how he got the silver medal he’s so proud of, and he said he got it for shooting a Northern Viet bastard right in the face. He said the…

The Therapist

Armon Mahdavi

Jacob opened up an entirely new door for us. After that, we often spoke to the camera directly, to our therapist, when it felt like speaking to each other was getting us nowhere. I loved how cinematic it felt, how odd it was to speak through the lens. I was reminded of a moment in Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, where the narrator says: Frankly, have you ever heard of anything stupider than to say to people, as they teach in film school, not to look at the camera?

The Stag

Yunya Yang

I’m very good at these stories. The bitter-sweet, could-have-been, wish-it-was-so ones that are prettier and more precious than happy-endings. Stories are better cut short, end before it begins, so there is no chance of spoiling.

Devils, Our Sons

Karissa Chen

Our sons told us to place the steel cleavers we used to butcher hogs and chickens beneath our pillows, in case our enemies appeared.


Non-Fiction

Something I Did Once Which I Thought Might Be Enriching

Tamar Jacobs

and the tour guide said what a shame how awful the heroin in Kensington but we would not be focusing on that today because this was an African American Iconic Hero tour and she smiled beatifically at the Black couple and the Black couple only...

Who Would Rather Stay at Home Alone?

Elizabeth Miki Brina

It’s approaching midnight and this is not how I would have wanted it to happen: sitting by myself on my porch, drinking wine from the bag of a box and chain-smoking cigarettes...

Paddling in the Bloody Moat

Helen McClory

A flood takes no notice of the borders we construct between inside and out. Like Cassandra sitting in the kitchen sink at her window, the Willoweed family and servant Old Ives can do nothing but observe.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Angie Mazakis

A drowning person will not splash and wave, will not shout or call out for help. Contrary to the ways in which it is dramatically performed on television and in film, drowning is nearly always physically unexpressed, measurably silent.

Ars Poetica

Nishta J. Mehra

Pain is uninteresting to everyone except the person who experiences it, and even then, the appeal wears off. I became bored by my own pain, afraid that I was becoming irrelevant, ceasing to exist. Who was I if I could not teach, could not parent, could not write? Pain makes a very poor companion, and rather enjoys maximizing presence so that no one and nothing else can occupy your time. I worried about Stockholm Syndrome: was I making nice with my pain or simply getting used to him?

Process

David Shields

You once said to me—as a joke, I suppose—that all your books are “brief, collaborative, and plagiarized,” but really what is the secret to your somewhat monomaniacal rate of production, especially the last decade?

Silver Salt

Richard Frailing

When I was 12, dad took me to the darkroom to help him develop film. He wanted to show me the enlarger, the dangerous developer liquid, and why red light won’t react with silver salt.

What I Wouldn't Give

Laura Dzubay

In Delaware Water Gap, I met a stranger I’d been looking for since Georgia. We both stayed the night in town, at a donation-based hostel in the basement of a church.


Poetry

Colors

Stephanie Jean

how easy it is to erase rusting yellows? / how easy to let blues blue into zombi? / how easy / is ease?

Nomad

Samyak Shertok

Do we all migrare: pass into a new condition? / Are we all natives—nativus: born in bondage— / walking toward no-border?

Shadows and Bed Sheets Blur My Memory OR Watching the Sunrise with Alejandra Pizarnik

Parker Logan

Can you see the imaginary houses? The bed post? The night stand? The trail of blood / leading back to you and me?

Our Verb is Loved

Kimberly Grey

to go is to be gone; one day quick as a ship / wreck dignified by sea, I realize I am incongruent / to the lover that has slept asleep beside me

December 20th

Nick Visconti

When my mind plucked me / abruptly from earth and gently // laid me in abstraction, time went and saw / the world.

Turn Around

Celeste Amidon

She worked in a supermarket before Showing women the way to the leeks, soaking the mop, affixing stickers to the cheeks of apples

Aubade with Postpartum Depression

Chelsea Dingman

How to enter my own waking so that I might feel alive. I often want / to lay down in the snow now. To be a little numb, at first, / as I’ve been since I gave birth & my bones became trestles / yielding other worlds.

_________ trash

Nikki Ummel

i don’t want to ___________________ about this.

The Ancient Art of Gematria

Nada Faris

It begins with a host (an immigration) of spirits clobbering / intestines. Think: “Longing as attention seeking,” or “attention / people, we are starting the show.” I will pay in tennis balls, carrot cake, / kangaroos, and quotes. Here are a few goblins. Take my heavenly glow.

a man with a gun in either hand

James Dewey

he can't sort mail or carry / library books to his car. he can’t give the tiny disco / ball dangling from his rearview mirror a spin.

The Shrine

Alexandria Peterson

a moon the size of Neptune / rising from the green muck like ectoplasmic / crossfire.

Geo Tracker

Jono Tosch

It was a relatively inexpensive truck, and suburban parents could both afford it (or payments on it) and teens, if they were paying for the gas from their allowance, could afford the gas...


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