By Cian Onus back when we used to look ahead of ourselves limbs and saliva entwined every time we only saw behind your lashes sweeping my cheeks night sweat the morning dew condensed on this body’s mismatchesyou liked your morning toast soaked in red teaa jar of honey to dip bread crusts in all filled […]
By Charlotte Amelia Poe oh, but if i go to the woodswould you follow me?footsteps in footprints,wolf to my wolfif you echo, my darling,rainfall on fresh leavesthe trees awake and alive,there before us and after – and dirt on hands and beneath nailsand you hunt as i hunt,and you howl as i howl,oh, the night
by Carol Casey on my skylightconversing, lingering,their raucous criesa threshold tosomewhere nearthe profound earthof birth, or death. Their gravelly calls fill me with fear that is part longing. In the midst of illness I ask them are you telling me to live or die? Both, they say. That’s hard, I tell them.They pace about, black
By Brody Alix Long summer, half-forgotten —when I felt I was dying, I thought of writing past lovers as if their memory of me could keep the disease from spreading.You begged, what do you do all afternoon in the bedroom? Praying, I said, red,Cuius regio, eius religio —keep the windows open.Bewaring the beetle on my
By Ann Weil One thousand wooden houses line the streets, centenarians painted white or in Easter-egg pastels, each with a porch, its ceiling painted like sky. Haint Blue, the color has been named, and is said to ward off spirits. There are always chairs, a rocker, sometimes a swing, and these porches beckon like pretty
Porch Life on a Limestone Island at the End of the Road Read More »
by Andrew Furst my loveand three hundred.between thema pictureof a long sand barstretched across the red sea.i am disguisedas an echoin dissolving water.threadless, fair,and uncolored.i forgetputting a price tag onthe red and sweetof listening to you readabout the dakotas,and their shaking winds.disconnected fromevery childhood friend;address, city, state, and zip.three hundred lovesforming a plane,intersecting at 11:11
By Amirah Al Wassif Every time I start to laughSomebody invents a new way of laughterI run to the closest mirrorBurying my swollen faceCounting my disappointments on my fingersNo music in the backgroundOnly the cracking of my bonesDo you hear it?I see you on the wallsYour purple face wavingLike a curseI put a hand on
The same old story Read More »
By Al Maginnes First story: separation. Little songs navigating waves of air. Clouds redundantin their mortality and reformation. Consider that a kind of proof.The coffee maker spits into action. A woman standing in frontof an open window breathes in all of creation her lungs can grab.Then lets go. Thirty two floors below, a man holds
For Those Considering Reincarnation Read More »
By Adriana Beltrano I’ll die in the Keysduring a hurricanenamed Farrah or Claudette or perhaps Odell.The storm will splay long-nailed fingers and scatter the wind,drawing waves toward the Sun. Today, I’m wrapped in something white,long, flowing; I’ve been heaved overboard.There’s nothing waiting for me.When I hit bottom, sand will bite my knees.When I rise, light
Snow Revelationby Yuan Changming Every winter we are remindedAll gaps and cracks can be filled upAll dirtiness and ugliness can be buried deep, andAll viewing difference can be harmonized into one single color Muted in white, as the land unfolds itself to show us howTo make a new start in spring
Snow Revelation by Yuan Changming Read More »
Erick Brucker’s short story, “Dank,” appeared in Backchannels Issue No. 2. 1. Your piece, “Dank,”has an unusual format. It felt like I was climbing the staircase of the story as I read. What role does form play in the piece for you? I think that what’s unusual about it is that the title comes in
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Sandy Coomer’s art was featured in Issue 2 of Backchannels, is the cover for upcoming Issue 4, and can also be found in Issue 5 this summer. How did you become interested in art? I am a very visual and detail-oriented person. I notice things – texture, line, movement, perspective, color. I notice differences between
Conversation with artist Sandy Coomer Read More »
Editing is sort of a secret skill. Every book we’ve ever read, every movie we watched, every textbook, description of an art piece, play program… all of them were written, then edited likely over and over again, often by teams of people, until they become the polished work we’re used to. We don’t talk about
What’s the Deal with Editing? Read More »
It’s Pride month! Diversity is an important concept in every system from microbiomes to our society. In the U.S., we used to think it meant “not just white,” which was a start. The dialogue in our country progressed from being ethnically- and racially-minded (I’ll use the race concept since it still holds a lot of
Why Curating Diverse Perspectives Isn’t Easy Read More »
I really hate writing sometimes. Maybe I should back up. I do love writing, those moments when I can’t not write anymore, after the idea’s been going around and around in my head for too long. After I carried it and it scratched at me while I sorted laundry into piles and decided not to
Sometimes I’d rather do taxes than write Read More »
This is the part I’m not supposed to say in a grad school or writing job application because it’s too cliché: I’ve been writing stories since I graduated from holding a crayon in my fist. It started with spelling words telling twenty-five sentence tales and progressed to diaries, then contest-winning essays, then songs and poems
I’ve been writing all my life. I remember my very first “published” piece that was proudly hanging on my grandparents’ wall. I had drawn a series of pictures with captions of a bear going to sleep, though it might have been a large dog (my artistic talents weren’t quite developed at age 6)! When in