Gravity and grace in counterpoise. From our cover and art feature by Palestinian painter Malak Mattar to the essays, poems, and stories that inhabit AGNI 101, the inescapable world finds its match in soaring gestures of imagination. In fiction, the characters of Silja Liv Kelleris, Alp Türkol, and Haytham el-Wardany (trans. Katharine Halls) give terrible circumstances a powerful second shape. Speakers in poems by Kazim Ali, CooXooEii Black, Amy Beeder, Hera Naguib, and Robert Pinsky gaze unflinchingly to counter our sturdiest myths. And in essays, Graison Gill, Brandi Bird, and Angela Pelster—among many others—invite us into truths more complicated than the surface suggests.