Ethnic Arithmetic

Ethnic Arithmetic (2)-page-001

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This poem is meant to be read as a contrapuntal poem, meaning that it can be read three ways: the left side, the right side, and together. As in a musical composition, there are two distinct melodies and the third is compilation of the movement back and forth between the two resulting in a new harmonic relationship.

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Sara Burnett’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, PALABRA, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook, Mother Tongue (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). She holds a MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a MA in English Literature from the University of Vermont. She is a recipient of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarships to support her writing.

Anti-hero

TV lists the names of the dead, their slow

halos burning.

In the flickering, teeth break off

in my head and

rattle around like jellybeans in a

plastic egg.

 

At the end of someone else’s pointed finger,

I’ve never made a decision

it would seem,

end over end in light.

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Kyle Vaughn’s poems have recently appeared in Adbusters, The Boiler, and Vinyl; his prose in English Journal; and his photography in Annalemma and Holon.  His book A New Light in Kalighat, featuring photos and stories about the children of sex workers and crematory workers in Kolkata, India, was published in 2013 and featured by Nicholas Kristof’s Half the Sky Movement.  His book of poetry writing exercises, The Genesis Writing Project, is forthcoming from NCTE.

Awe

Hallelujah these hearts won with ordinance.

The latest reports say the ICBM is

democratic.

If the approval rating dips,

we’ll fly sorties over

the cribs of sleeping children

in machines we name Hornet or Blackbird or Mustang.

They will carry blood-red rubies in their mouths,

rain under wings,

and ghosts in their manes.

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Kyle Vaughn’s poems have recently appeared in Adbusters, The Boiler, and Vinyl; his prose in English Journal; and his photography in Annalemma and Holon.  His book A New Light in Kalighat, featuring photos and stories about the children of sex workers and crematory workers in Kolkata, India, was published in 2013 and featured by Nicholas Kristof’s Half the Sky Movement.  His book of poetry writing exercises, The Genesis Writing Project, is forthcoming from NCTE.

TOWER

I have been there, briefly.

I can tell you they watch us

through a scope they use to make us

appear, as we go about our business,

very near. At other times,

for reasons I don’t understand,

they watch us through the other end.

“They are far from here today,”

they tell themselves then

when it seems they need us to be

elsewhere. They might easily see us

with the naked eye, but they appear

to have lost that ability; perhaps

it is forgotten or forbidden.

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Richard Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; and his new collection Noon until Night. His other books include the celebrated Half the House: a Memoir, published in a 20th Anniversary Edition in 2015, the 2014 memoir Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories. His work, both prose and verse, appears in such journals as Agni, Barrow Street, Consequence, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, The Literary Review, The Manhattan Review, Poetry, Witness and elsewhere. A former Chair of PEN New England, he is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston.

 

 

Ritual for the Mountain Goddess – The Offering

 

 

 

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Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and formerly in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Jazz’ art career debut was in 2007, with a solo exhibition named “Karnival” in the Sincewell Gallery (Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Since then, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and the United Kingdom every year, with a recent live drawing event in the Netherlands. Her most recent solo show was with Yiri Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  One of her latest collaborative projects is with Houndstooth, London’s Fabric Club’s record label, on their 2018 compilation “In Death’s Dream Kingdom.

Ritual for the Mountain Goddess – Obsession

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Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and formerly in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Jazz’ art career debut was in 2007, with a solo exhibition named “Karnival” in the Sincewell Gallery (Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Since then, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and the United Kingdom every year, with a recent live drawing event in the Netherlands. Her most recent solo show was with Yiri Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  One of her latest collaborative projects is with Houndstooth, London’s Fabric Club’s record label, on their 2018 compilation “In Death’s Dream Kingdom.

 

 

Contrary to the Norm

 

 

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Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and formerly in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Jazz’ art career debut was in 2007, with a solo exhibition named “Karnival” in the Sincewell Gallery (Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Since then, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and the United Kingdom every year, with a recent live drawing event in the Netherlands. Her most recent solo show was with Yiri Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  One of her latest collaborative projects is with Houndstooth, London’s Fabric Club’s record label, on their 2018 compilation “In Death’s Dream Kingdom.

Gu-Diao

 

 

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Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and formerly in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Jazz’ art career debut was in 2007, with a solo exhibition named “Karnival” in the Sincewell Gallery (Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Since then, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and the United Kingdom every year, with a recent live drawing event in the Netherlands. Her most recent solo show was with Yiri Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  One of her latest collaborative projects is with Houndstooth, London’s Fabric Club’s record label, on their 2018 compilation “In Death’s Dream Kingdom.

Flayed Equuis 4

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Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and formerly in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Jazz’ art career debut was in 2007, with a solo exhibition named “Karnival” in the Sincewell Gallery (Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Since then, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and the United Kingdom every year, with a recent live drawing event in the Netherlands. Her most recent solo show was with Yiri Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  One of her latest collaborative projects is with Houndstooth, London’s Fabric Club’s record label, on their 2018 compilation “In Death’s Dream Kingdom.

 

Syzygy

Does it quell or quiver
mundane terror
to wear blinders
to see better —

to close one eye
in search of an opening,
bent backwards like
a shadow over and over

the millennia? History and
celestial bodies are in orbit.
Is it more or less dangerous
to stare at the naked truth? Your

moon makes its rounds, our
sun craves like the fire
it is, then a small sphere
goes dim somewhere

in the incomprehensible universe.
Is this allowed, sliver of reverence
for science? Is this halo hallowed or
merely fleeting convergence?

Bigotry has a perigee,
apparently. Umbrage
eclipses unity. Yet
here in the umbra

look how we’re all tilting
our heads to the same degree,
eyes up, arms outreaching
in unison, observing the same fact,

one straight line from neck
to sky, awed and angled in respect —
not fear or feckless furor —
saluting that ripe then sickle star

and its long dark stripe.

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Alexandra Haines-Stiles is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, where she studied twentieth-century literature and language. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review Online, Hanging Loose and elsewhere. She lives in New York.