AGNI 99

AGNI 99

All of our places remain. Contributors struggle with displacement and “home,” belonging and having to establish, resisting and being able to simply be. Partly devoted to a major new portfolio of writing from the Central American and Mexican diasporas, AGNI 99 unites around bewilderment and the force of clarity—discovering how we landed here and acknowledging where we stand. Geography extends beyond the folio, in poems by Mosab Abu Toha and Mercè Rodoreda (trans. Rebecca Simpson); fiction by Steven Archer and Urvi Kumbhat; essays by Lia Purpura and Marion Winik; and more. Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Guatemala’s “accident painter,” sets the vivacity and tumble right in front of us, on the cover.

Editor’s Note

The Uncanny Valley

Fiction

Burrowing Creatures
Greg’s Emile

Essays

Owl: An Imaginary
Fifty Mothers
The Last Place I Saw Them: An Abecedarian

Poetry

For a Moment
Kapparot
Breathers
The Devouring Economy of Nature
from Alliterative Autobiography
from Guerra Cantos
Translated from the Filipino by Ethan Chua
[Ulysses on Nausicaa’s Island]
Translated from the Catalan by Rebecca Simpson
Ulysses on the Island of Circe
Translated from the Catalan by Rebecca Simpson
Journal for Pomegranates
Intermittent Water
Translated from the Spanish by Yaccaira Salvatierra
Search
Translated from the Spanish by Yaccaira Salvatierra
Nosotros
Against Rhetoric
For My Father and His Tender Heart

Art Feature

Muy peligroso / Very dangerous
The Accident Painter

To Never Have Risked Our Lives: A Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing

Fiction
Camilla
Mud & Chiffon
Pizzle Flowers
The Invented Languages of Adela Arkani
All the Things We Hid
Poetry
“But there is no migrant crisis . . .”
“Inside me there’s a refugee . . .”
Homo naledi
Palestine Is Showing Us That Decolonization Is Not Abstract
“Awech at we alaj b’e noya”
Translated from the Spanish into K'iche' by Wel Raxulew
“Esta carretera también es tuya mija”
“This highway is also yours my daughter”
Translated from the Spanish by Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez
One Rabbit
Ode to Malignancy
CITY OF MEXICO-U.S. BORDER BUREAU OF VITAL STATISTICS
creation myth: chicana (1999)
The Lesson, But Not Yet, Not—
from Infernal Splendor
Translated from the Spanish by Matthew Byrne
Apocalypses: Scenario #445-220
The Unwritten Rules of Animating Speedy Gonzales
Whenever I Say I’m Mexican
Aránzazu Hears One Final Prayer Before the Monsoon
Coyote-Girl Bantu
La Malinche Orders Chipotle