AGNI 97
Contents
Editor’s Note
Fiction
Human Whistle
by Via Bleidner
At This Moment in a Different Year
by Alex Foster
Small Talk
Face-Blindness
Colors
Chauffeur
Essays
On Maps
Unbending Progress
An Iwo Jima Marine’s Excellent Buddhist Funeral
by Kai Maristed
The Beauty of the Camera
Poetry
For Sale
Last Testament
Picturebook Brockton
What the Priestess Says
by Kwame Dawes
Site Specific
by Daisy Fried
Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures
by Kim Garcia
Phony Ghazal
Hysterosalpingogram
a condensed history of my father’s addiction
by Karan Kapoor
Your Flight
by Sydney Lea
Ching Shih Discourses on Silk
Tiptoe Ode
Big Bad
by Tyler Mills
Syllables
by Trey Moody
Fairy Tale
by Trey Moody
Letter from Control
by D. Nurkse
A Study in Summer
by Weijia Pan
The Slave’s Descendant Addresses King Cotton
“this universe, my most docile & stunted”
by Danez Smith
(don’t worry) if there’s a hell below, we’re all going to go—sonnet, chopped & screwed
by Danez Smith
Bug Chaser
by Danez Smith
“I OEDIPUS ask you . . .”
by Adam Tavel
“I OEDIPUS imagine . . .”
by Adam Tavel
Medusa as Memory
by Lee Upton
Portrait of the Chest as Fogged Mirror and Ballpoint Tattoo
by Kelly Weber
Grief for the Whale, Again
Grief for the Whale
Chinatown Blues
by John Yau
Art Feature
Paradise City
by Salman Toor
Sorties and Soundings. The opulent colors and imperiled undertones of cover and portfolio artist Salman Toor set the tone for AGNI 97. Stories by Garielle Lutz, Via Bleidner, and Anna Badkhen put the seismograph to relationships and track the needle as it jumps. Essayist Kai Maristed assesses the loss and legacy of her enigmatic father, while Ishion Hutchinson shows how the close reading of a poem can open into a close reading of the complexities of history. Poems by Kwame Dawes, Nicole W. Lee, Danez Smith, and Tyler Mills construct tales, mythographies, and fabulisms, that gesture toward another world: one that can and must be made from ours. All this and much more.
| Editors | Sven Birkerts | ||
| William Pierce | |||
| Associate Editor | Shuchi Saraswat | ||
| Senior Fiction Editor | Mary O'Donoghue | ||
| Senior Poetry Editor | Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | ||
| Poetry Editor | Jessica Q. Stark | ||
| Nonfiction Editors | Kelle Groom | ||
| Shuchi Saraswat | |||
| Editors at Large | Julia Brown | ||
| Jennifer Alise Drew | |||
| Reviews Editor | Rachel Mennies | ||
| Blog Editors | Ryan Choi | ||
| Grace Singh Smith | |||
| Asst. Fiction Editors | Ben Black | ||
| Amber Caron | |||
| Ariel Courage | |||
| Assoc. Poetry Editor | Esteban Rodriguez | ||
| Asst. Poetry Editors | Dorsey Craft | ||
| Jenny George | |||
| Newsletter Director | Alison Lanier | ||
| Newsletter Introductions | Arielle Kaplan | ||
| Social (Facebook) | Effie Sapuridis | ||
| Blog Assistant | Cynthia Ayeza | ||
| Social (Twitter) | Esteban Rodriguez | ||
| Arielle Kaplan | |||
| Social (Instagram) | Sven Birkerts | ||
| Ariel Courage | |||
| Editorial Assistants | Melissa Cook | ||
| Rachel M. Dillon | |||
| Jody Hartkopp | |||
| Ella Schroeder | |||
| Founding Editor | Askold Melnyczuk | ||
| Advisory Board | Leslie Epstein | ||
| Ha Jin | |||
| Robert Pinsky | |||
| Rosanna Warren | |||
| Contributing Editors | Sumita Chakraborty | ||
| John J. Clayton | |||
| Stuart Dischell | |||
| Sharon Dunn, ed. emerita | |||
| Anne Germanacos | |||
| Marie Howe | |||
| Alex Johnson | |||
| Dana Levin | |||
| Fred Marchant | |||
| Fiona McCrae | |||
| Gail Mazur | |||
| Dzvinia Orlowsky | |||
| E.C. Osondu | |||
| Lia Purpura | |||
| George Scialabba | |||
| Tom Sleigh | |||
| Sue Standing | |||
| Oksana Zabuzhko | |||
| Typesetting & Design | Gian Lombardo / Quale Press |