Where Southern Soul Meets Memphis Magic
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Magazine
Issue 120, Spring 2023
This spring, contributors interrogate the gothic essence of the American and global South in new and unexpected ways. Pulitzer Center journalist Tom Hundley covers a horrific tale of police brutality that was one of the first to make front-page news. Miles Davis makes a surreal appearance as the “Prince of Darkness” in new fiction from Jeffery Renard Allen’s forthcoming collection Fat Time. Justin Nobel catalogs the destruction and aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Barbuda. Other pieces delve into mysterious former tenants, the environmental inbetweens of West Texas, the dystopian rhymes of billy woods, and the haunted inner landscapes of Cormac McCarthy’s characters. Ultimately though, we find the light: in North Carolina emerging writer Isaac Hughes Green’s short fiction starring a pair of size fifteen basketball shoes, and in photographer Nicole Hernandez's visual love letter to Atlanta. Contributors new and old return to our pages with fresh takes on land, history, violence, and change.
Editor’s Letter: “Every Brush Stroke, a Breath” by Danielle A. Jackson
POINTS SOUTH
The Things We Leave Behind, by Madeline Weinfield
Who Is Sam Blow?, a poem by Treasure Shields Redmond
Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, by Joshua Peacock
Front-Page News, by Tom Hundley
The Old-Time Sounds of Clifftop, by Julia Thomas
Five Hours from Someplace Beautiful, by Brendan Egan
FEATURES
PINOCCHIO
A story by Jeffery Renard Allen
FOUR POEMS
Grief, Grief, Goose: A Triptych of Poems, by Jacob Shores-Argüello
Real Money, by Edgar Kunz
Sandalwood, by Tim Z. Hernandez
Twelve Stone House, by John Gosslee
THE LONG WAKE OF THE STORM
Six years later, Barbuda still reckons with one of history's strongest hurricanes
by Justin Nobel
DEAR ATLANTA: MANIPULATION OF THE REFLECTION
In her visual love letter to ATL, Nicole Hernandez photographs authentic interactions between friends, lovers, and mothers
Photographs by Nicole Hernandez, Curated by EWANG
FIFTEENS
A story by Isaac Hughes Green
OMNIVORE
GOD’S SILENCE, HUMANITY’S DEAFNESS
On Cormac McCarthy’s two new novels
by Christopher C. King
MADNESS IN THE CUPBOARDS
billy woods’s gripping rhymes elevate the ordinary
by Marcus J. Moore
Man Down
From the web
by Jewel Wicker
Terence Nance's Interdimensional Healing
From the web
by Clarissa Brooks
ART BY: Lisa Choinacky, Mary DeVincentis, Tommy Kha, Bob Thompson, Marcus Brutus, Lex Thompson, Gordon Parks, Heather Evans Smith, Lisa Elmaleh, Peter Brown, Miles Davis, Miguel Rothschild, Frank Walter, Mohammid Walbrook, Nicole Hernandez, Andrew Fish, Will Warasila, Cosmo Whyte, Edvard Munch, Rog Walker/HBO.
COVER: Cup and Ring (detail), an ink painting by Lisa Choinacky © The artist