EDITORIAL REMARKS by M.R. Thomas
THIS IS THE TWELFTH YEAR and twenty-fifth issue of Slush Pile Magazine.
I feel tempted to go back over each of the previous two dozen issues to give a full account of all the extraordinary things our contributors have done since their work appeared in these pages, but there simply wouldn’t be space. They have published novels, won awards, signed film deals. They are gifted. And that, of course, was and is the whole point: to find and champion important work.
I feel proud of what we’ve done here, and of the community we’ve built.
But I’m also aware of how much more we could have done if we’d had the time and money to do it. The hope at the outset was always to scale up. Instead, we only ever could scale back, and then back again. And now we find ourselves with more demands on our time than we can keep up with. We can’t scale back any further.
And so, it is time to bid this beautiful project adieu… (read more)
A TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENT by Vikram Kapur
AS I’M GETTING STARTED on my makeup, my phone beeps.
My manager Dinesh is texting. There is a girl asking for u.
For him they remain girls rather than customers. Tell her to try another artist I can only get there by 11.30.
I press send and go to work on the dark circles under my eyes. Dinesh’s message arrives while I’m applying the concealer. She says she’ll wait for u... (read more)
THE CRABSHELL by DS Maolalai
AN EMPTY HOUSE, OPEN
as tides
and dead crabshells. the guts
gone to seabird,
the legs and the various
bones… (read more)
CATKIN by Lois Marie Harrod
LITTLE KITTEN
carrier of scratch and sneeze
flower without petal
larval blossom, birch tassel
chestnut fringe
hermaphrodite in the poplar… (read more)
GARDENIAS by Tom Laichas
SO TOO THE LANTANAS. One night in an ancient annum, when Venice California / lawned from end to end, a Douglas Aircraft engineer said to his wife, Let’s plant / lantanas. They’ll bring butterflies. And so, in that wide front yard, lantanas / luminesced, bright as color tee-vees… (read more)
DEAD MONARCHS by Shannon Bowring
IT’S BUTTERFLY SEASON. The leaves have just begun to yellow; the crickets sing all day. At the library where I work, the Children’s Room staff have been busy tending to a plastic jar of milkweed and monarch caterpillars, recording the creatures’ evolution and posting it to our social media pages. This used to be witnessed in person… (read more)
THIS RESEMBLES A FUNERAL RITUAL by Molly Fuller
SCARCITY OF TREES open floor plan
room for all (especially at holidays)
toxicity of paint dependent on individual
exposure deeper and lower
farther from windows (which can shatter)
doors (which can fly open) exterior walls… (read more)
REBIRTH ON THE HINTERLAND ROAD by Bethan Tyler
I FELT THE HAUNTING before she told me
he’d died in there, my aunt’s cruel father.
I slept on the floor and felt chill, thought the
storm at the eaves was a spillage of blood,
awoke to smoke-yellow walls, grease… (read more)
ABSENT MINDED by Epiphany Ferrell
SHE FORGOT THE WORD “impenetrable.” It just wouldn’t come to mind. The kind of thing that happened often at work to people even younger than she. It wasn’t unusual. Nothing to worry about. She was so unworried, she told Elise about it. Elise laughed, confessed to similar occurrences... (read more)
“3 HUNGRY DAYS FOR DELIVERYMAN STUCK IN ELEVATOR”
by Aidan Lee
FOR THREE DAYS no one saw him
metal box suspended
between floors
three days, crouched,
then bent: hunger and thirst
and fear wondering… (read more)
A / BRIDGE / MENT by Travis Helms
(SECOND COUSIN) And still each day he went out in the grains.
(FIRST COUSIN) During the hardest harvest seen in years.
(COUSIN REMOVED) ‘I have no right to ask about your pains.’
I thought, nervous with my coffee-cup… (read more)
FOUR POEMS by Rebecca Bridge
REALIZE THAT YOUR ARMS are just parentheses and
between them there is a word that has no synonym.
There is simply the one way of saying it and it
means everything. (read more)
FEATURED ARTIST Jenny Brown
JENNY BROWN MAKES ART that questions our understanding of time, space, energy, and matter. With a focus on visualizing the most peculiar & fantastic phenomena of the natural world, her collages and drawings are first and foremost celebrations of the ongoing physical and spiritual evolution of our universe.
Brown is a 1996 graduate of Bennington College and received her MFA in 2005 from The School of Visual Arts, where she focused on the study of painting, drawing, and collage. She moved to Rhode Island in 2008, and currently works out of an antique and vintage paper filled studio in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood. (read more)
