THE LAST ISSUE - AUGUST 2017

Adieu, Adieu
El Paso Free Zone | Fiction --- Michael Carson
Love Letter from the Anthropocene | Essays --- Maria Sledmere
Peripatet | Essay --- Grant Maierhofer
wish images : asja, architectonics | Excerpt from My Red Heaven --- Lance Olsen
Dining at the Stockyard Trough | Excerpt from Lacking Character --- Curtis White
From Camp Marmalade | Poems --- Wayne Koestenbaum
Mother Tongue | On Doris Lessing --- Victoria Best
Notes Towards a Return | Essay --- Fernando Sdrigotti
Bees are the Overseers | Poem --- Rikki Ducornet / with Allan Kausch Art
Almost dies all the time | Short Story --- Jowita Bydlowska
Bill | Essay — Gary Garvin
While contemplating suicide by the open window | Poems --- Zsuzsa Takács, Translated by Erika Mihálycsa
Of Beginnings and Endings: Huck Finn and Tom Eliot | Essay --- Patrick J. Keane
Ode to Meaning, or The Joyful Apocalypse | The Art of Josh Dorman --- Mary Kathryn Jablonski
Two Sound Fetishists | Short Story --- Kinga  Fabó
The Wrong Balcony | Review of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall --- Julie Larios
Go Down To Hell | Boris Dralyuk Translates Poems by Alexander Tinyakov
Uimhir a Cúig | Hollow: Short Story --- Paul McVeigh
Influence, a Day in the Life | Essay --- Ralph Angel
Slap Me With Mortality While I Am Strong | Poems --- Ronna Bloom
Valparaiso | Fiction --- Jessica Sequeira
The Wacky Beetle | Review of For Isabel: A Mandala by Antonio Tabucchi --- Natalia Sarkissian
Romesick | Essay --- Erika Mihálycsa
The Writing on the Wall | Fiction --- S. D. Chrostowska
Division and Multiplication | On Reading Fiction --- Warren Motte
Channeling Jane | Jane Austen the Radical & Jane at Home --- Laura Michele Diener
Invisible Ink | Memoir --- Paul Pines
Of Discrimination, Transculturalism, and the Case for Integration | Essay -- Montague Kobbé
Numero Cinco | The Dead: Poem & Interview — Maria Rivera
Tokens | Fiction --- Bruce Stone
Verisimilitude: The Moral Aesthetic of George Saunders --- Nowick Gray
Adua | Novel Excerpt — Igiaba Scego, Translated by Jamie Richards
Go Back to What? | Poems --- H. L. Hix
What the Heart Can Bear | Tamil Love Poems from Kuruntokai --- A. Anupama
What It's Like Living Here --- Paul Lindholdt in Spokane
Imaginary Cities | Book Excerpt --- Darran Anderson
These Are Places God Wouldn’t Go | Short Story --- Chika Onyenezi
Strandbeests | Poems --- Stephanie Bolster
Last Call | Numéro Cinq's August Issue Preview
Top of the Page | Touchstones
Adieu, Adieu

Adieu, Adieu

I will never forget the decency, kindness and camaraderie that have characterized NC’s inner workings. You are an astonishing tribe. I am eternally grateful.

El Paso Free Zone | Fiction --- Michael Carson

El Paso Free Zone | Fiction — Michael Carson

“What do you know of life?” I ask him real soft, touching his lips with mine. “What does a man like you know of the sea?”

Love Letter from the Anthropocene | Essays --- Maria Sledmere

Love Letter from the Anthropocene | Essays — Maria Sledmere

All will be love in the warming waters, the subduing horror, the coming of nothingness.

Peripatet | Essay --- Grant Maierhofer

Peripatet | Essay — Grant Maierhofer

I walked, then, to put myself at the feet of living and submit to human beings, to open myself and fail to welcome entirely the lonely glints returned in eyes as I went past.

wish images : asja, architectonics | Excerpt from My Red Heaven --- Lance Olsen

wish images : asja, architectonics | Excerpt from My Red Heaven — Lance Olsen

He crosses out that paragraph, writes in a choked scribble I am falling in love with lostness.

Dining at the Stockyard Trough | Excerpt from Lacking Character --- Curtis White

Dining at the Stockyard Trough | Excerpt from Lacking Character — Curtis White

And she said, “Yes, I knew what he was like, but I thought he was kidding.”

From Camp Marmalade | Poems --- Wayne Koestenbaum

From Camp Marmalade | Poems — Wayne Koestenbaum

reaching / toward narrative but not necessarily / approving of the reach

Mother Tongue | On Doris Lessing --- Victoria Best

Mother Tongue | On Doris Lessing — Victoria Best

They were locked in airtight roles, waging a futile war to maintain a status quo that damaged and reduced them both. Compassion and sympathy – love itself – had no room to breathe,

Notes Towards a Return | Essay --- Fernando Sdrigotti

Notes Towards a Return | Essay — Fernando Sdrigotti

…the most dangerous part of returning, that poetic possibility, the dangerous and fake nostalgia all poetry entails.

Bees are the Overseers | Poem --- Rikki Ducornet / with Allan Kausch Art

Bees are the Overseers | Poem — Rikki Ducornet / with Allan Kausch Art

-In the charged company of thugs, the skull both breathes and barks.

Almost dies all the time | Short Story --- Jowita Bydlowska

Almost dies all the time | Short Story — Jowita Bydlowska

I would watch her plump, small mouth talk and talk and think of penises she sucked and I would get jealous. I wanted to kiss that mouth.

Bill | Essay — Gary Garvin

Bill | Essay — Gary Garvin

Sometimes, even if there is no explanation in the words, or the explanations do not explain, at least I find a container and the possibilities of containers that might provide a context…

While contemplating suicide by the open window | Poems --- Zsuzsa Takács, Translated by Erika Mihálycsa

While contemplating suicide by the open window | Poems — Zsuzsa Takács, Translated by Erika Mihálycsa

To bear the unsayable agony / of the lovers seated on an anthill…

Of Beginnings and Endings: Huck Finn and Tom Eliot | Essay --- Patrick J. Keane

Of Beginnings and Endings: Huck Finn and Tom Eliot | Essay — Patrick J. Keane

…overloading of the book with cultural value that had led to feel-good white liberal complacency regarding race.

Ode to Meaning, or The Joyful Apocalypse | The Art of Josh Dorman --- Mary Kathryn Jablonski

Ode to Meaning, or The Joyful Apocalypse | The Art of Josh Dorman — Mary Kathryn Jablonski

My goal is to generate a feeling of joyful apocalypse.

Two Sound Fetishists | Short Story --- Kinga  Fabó

Two Sound Fetishists | Short Story — Kinga Fabó

Her anachronistic organs cramped; as with heart and soul. Her love organs could not interlock, her working organ went kaput. If a glance could kill! Alas, it couldn’t.

The Wrong Balcony | Review of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall --- Julie Larios

The Wrong Balcony | Review of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall — Julie Larios

…working hard on both poetry and her love life, less so on her reputation.

Go Down To Hell | Boris Dralyuk Translates Poems by Alexander Tinyakov

Go Down To Hell | Boris Dralyuk Translates Poems by Alexander Tinyakov

Lovely new coffins are headed my way, / full of the finest young men. / Pleasure to see them, simply a joy –

Uimhir a Cúig | Hollow: Short Story --- Paul McVeigh

Uimhir a Cúig | Hollow: Short Story — Paul McVeigh

At that, the girl’s father jumped up, lifted the boy from his chair, snapped him in half over his knee, and threw him on the fire.

Influence, a Day in the Life | Essay --- Ralph Angel

Influence, a Day in the Life | Essay — Ralph Angel

For the artist, wasting time, which the French perfected, is called discipline.

Slap Me With Mortality While I Am Strong | Poems --- Ronna Bloom

Slap Me With Mortality While I Am Strong | Poems — Ronna Bloom

Slap me good and hard with mortality while I’m strong. / My body wants to run as though it’s seen a ghost.

Valparaiso | Fiction --- Jessica Sequeira

Valparaiso | Fiction — Jessica Sequeira

Three times during the night, her face turns to mine. It’s always the face first, or is it the hands, so subtle they make the drawing near of all else both possible and necessary.

The Wacky Beetle | Review of For Isabel: A Mandala by Antonio Tabucchi --- Natalia Sarkissian

The Wacky Beetle | Review of For Isabel: A Mandala by Antonio Tabucchi — Natalia Sarkissian

The journey during which truths are revealed.

Romesick | Essay --- Erika Mihálycsa

Romesick | Essay — Erika Mihálycsa

Rome is burning. Every day it catches fire somewhere. On the edges a spark blazes up in the vibrating air, in its place a blue ghost-flame quivers and burns a hole into the map.

The Writing on the Wall | Fiction --- S. D. Chrostowska

The Writing on the Wall | Fiction — S. D. Chrostowska

They were known principally for the clarity of their communication, having abolished speech, leaving them only writing.

Division and Multiplication | On Reading Fiction --- Warren Motte

Division and Multiplication | On Reading Fiction — Warren Motte

She wonders if the Red King was a figure in her dream or if she was a figure in his dream.

Channeling Jane | Jane Austen the Radical & Jane at Home --- Laura Michele Diener

Channeling Jane | Jane Austen the Radical & Jane at Home — Laura Michele Diener

Every biographer, in possession of the exact same sources, must find an entirely different character.

Invisible Ink | Memoir --- Paul Pines

Invisible Ink | Memoir — Paul Pines

I wanted to possess Captain Midnight’s decoder, the latent, undisclosed landscape of potentials, things in their nascent state on the way to being realized.

Of Discrimination, Transculturalism, and the Case for Integration | Essay -- Montague Kobbé

Of Discrimination, Transculturalism, and the Case for Integration | Essay — Montague Kobbé

Atticus Finch and Sven Mary share a desire to defend the outcasts of their respective societies.

Numero Cinco | The Dead: Poem & Interview — Maria Rivera

Numero Cinco | The Dead: Poem & Interview — Maria Rivera

beneath the enormous sky of Anáhuac, / they walk, / they drag themselves, / with their bowl of horror in their hands, / their terrifying tenderness.

Tokens | Fiction --- Bruce Stone

Tokens | Fiction — Bruce Stone

He reads his life’s unfolding as if it were an entry in a dictionary of North American childhood, a dictionary with a narrative logic and sensibility, as if every experience were representative…

Verisimilitude: The Moral Aesthetic of George Saunders --- Nowick Gray

Verisimilitude: The Moral Aesthetic of George Saunders — Nowick Gray

Key dimension of Saunders’ realism is the absurdism embedded within it: a natural discovery given the inherent absurdities of American culture.

Adua | Novel Excerpt — Igiaba Scego, Translated by Jamie Richards

Adua | Novel Excerpt — Igiaba Scego, Translated by Jamie Richards

Zoppe knew that the best escape route was through his head. That was the place where he found all the lost scents of his childhood.

Go Back to What? | Poems --- H. L. Hix

Go Back to What? | Poems — H. L. Hix

Go back to storm warning and rain delay. / Go back to parchment, papyrus, vellum. / Go back to land line and gravel driveway. / Go back to blent, unbent light, pre-prism.

What the Heart Can Bear | Tamil Love Poems from Kuruntokai --- A. Anupama

What the Heart Can Bear | Tamil Love Poems from Kuruntokai — A. Anupama

She is the poem that has drowned my soul to its last drenched flower.

What It's Like Living Here --- Paul Lindholdt in Spokane

What It’s Like Living Here — Paul Lindholdt in Spokane

In the business of Indian-white relations, place names remain as blunt reminders of our ancestors’ legacy of conquest.

Imaginary Cities | Book Excerpt --- Darran Anderson

Imaginary Cities | Book Excerpt — Darran Anderson

The future will be old. It may be bright and shiny, terrible and wonderful but, if we are to be certain of anything, it will be old.

These Are Places God Wouldn’t Go | Short Story --- Chika Onyenezi

These Are Places God Wouldn’t Go | Short Story — Chika Onyenezi

He lured him to the back of his hotel and butchered him. When they found the head, it had tears in the eyes.

Strandbeests | Poems --- Stephanie Bolster

Strandbeests | Poems — Stephanie Bolster

The middle is rife with references. / Can only really be named long long after, / when end begins to whinny its arrival. / And no one will want that name.

Last Call | Numéro Cinq's August Issue Preview

Last Call | Numéro Cinq’s August Issue Preview

This is the Last Call issue because it is the final issue.

Top of the Page | Touchstones

Top of the Page | Touchstones

A retrospective series of touchstone texts, pieces that define the magazine’s underlying aesthetic, the ideal toward which we have always aspired.

RECENT BACK ISSUES

Vol, VIII, No. 6, June 2017

Vol. VIII, No. 7, July 2017