Summer 2022

The Summer Issue | 2022

September 9, 2022

Poetry by Petr Hruška, Gerry Stewart, Jeffrey McDaniel, Jeff Friedman, Karel Šebek, Joshua Weiner, Charlie Clark, Clint Margrave, R.A. Allen, VJ René, Beaver West, J. Alan Nelson, Patrick Redmond, Susan Barry-Schulz, Justin Lacour, and Siobhan Ward. Fiction by Marijana Čanak, Lukáš Cabala, and Bianca Bellová. An essay by Siegfried Mortkowitz. An interview with Mi’kmaw/L’nu artist Michelle Sylliboy. Picks by Stephan Delbos, Joshua Mensch, Chris Crawford, and Jan Zikmund.

The Summer Issue | 2022

September 9, 2022

Poetry by Petr Hruška, Gerry Stewart, Jeffrey McDaniel, Jeff Friedman, Karel Šebek, Joshua Weiner, Charlie Clark, Clint Margrave, R.A. Allen, VJ René, Beaver West, J. Alan Nelson, Patrick Redmond, Susan Barry-Schulz, Justin Lacour, and Siobhan Ward. Fiction by Marijana Čanak, Lukáš Cabala, and Bianca Bellová. An essay by Siegfried Mortkowitz. An interview with Mi’kmaw/L’nu artist Michelle Sylliboy. Picks by Stephan Delbos, Joshua Mensch, Chris Crawford, and Jan Zikmund.

Michelle Sylliboy

Interview with L’nu interdisciplinary artist Michelle Sylliboy

Mi’kmaq/L’nu artist and author Michelle Sylliboy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised on her traditional L’nuk territory in We’koqmaq, Cape Breton. Her published collection of photographs and L’nuk hieroglyphic poetry, Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready, won the 2020 Indigenous Voices Award. Jessica Mensch interviewed her this summer at her home.

Petr Hruška

True darkness is in a child’s bedroom. Deep black. Elsewhere there’s just a meager, watery twilight, in which everything, in the end, acquires a humiliating distinctness.

Bianca Bellová. Photo by Jan Trnka

Bianca Bellová

My body is a shallow mound, is how her most famous poem began. She had written it when she was the same age as the young man who was sitting opposite her now, wanting to interview her.

Jeff Friedman

The autocrat draws a large crowd for his speech. He begins to speak but no words come out.

Gerry Stewart

Calling this city my home / is a weighty dream I cannot cast aside / or let them haul away.

Jeffrey McDaniel

Little kisses have a way of growing / into big penises, said the grandmother / on prom night. Little leaks sink a ship / yelled the captain, seawater on his lips.

Joshua Weiner

The sun was high, and it was like the air wanted to have sex with you. Looking down I could see him slowly make his way along the street, stopping to say hello to someone, a man waiting with an old style hat …

Karel Šebek

I was in the madhouse I’m going to be in the madhouse I am in the madhouse everyone is / I write to keep the train on course to crush me / it’ll happen on a morning no less beautiful than this

Gaurav Monga

Christian Dior, in his Little Dictionary of Fashion maintains that “if you have a particularly outstanding feature it is always a good thing to emphasise it. In fact the whole of fashion rests largely on emphasis.”

Marijana Čanak

The teacher swung his arm to strike her once more, but it remained in mid-air, as if petrified. A blue children’s watch was engraved on his skin. And with every tick the clasp sank deeper into his flesh. They could not get it off without cutting.

Charlie Clark

My friend / the advertiser reminds me it was the poet / Lew Welch who came up with the slogan / “RAID Kills Bugs Dead.” He was a Buddhist, right? / I don’t know why he killed himself, but when he did, / his body was never found

Clint Margrave

Even if they exist, we are still alone. / Not like they’re going to invite us / to any of their parties / or read any of our books.

VJ René

After breakfast I force his genitals through the wind / shield of the white convertible, crying like a child. // The situation allows me ample freedom to explore / myself in various trajectories.

Lukáš Cabala

It contained the body of a roughly four-year-old boy. That in itself is astounding, since we’re talking about a time frame of about twenty-four thousand years ago …

R. A. Allen

Friends and loved ones visit less and less, / and then not at all. Maybe they’re starting / to get the joke, to figure out we’re not down / there in those holes. Look up. We’re here —

Patrick Redmond

I say lovely too much, & it means nothing. / Outside is lovely. / The purpled sun is lovely / in its polluted backdrop / The shadows of men dangling from the roof

Beaver West

Springtime, I’m stoned at the wake. / Dad’s gray face sunk in makeup / asleep in the box. Mom weeps, / holding hands with the drywall guy.

J. Alan Nelson

Pablo Picasso enters his blue period / when his best friend stands from his plate / in the middle of a Paris café / and shoots himself.

Siegfried Mortkowitz

Because he wanted all the attention at the funeral, all the condolences, all the pity. The big man in sorrow. Jakob weeping.

Susan Barry-Schulz

On the island of Saaremaa I would have been considered a beautiful bride. No / shame there for size ten feet and thick calves wide thighs and no wonder.

Justin Lacour

I am a coward, / even in the service of exposing kids / to beauty

Siobhan Ward

Someone shouts There’s a fucking kid shot in the head. / After your death, from Belfast to Florida, your face / on murals. They say Lyra lives on. But that’s a lie.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Christopher Crawford

We’ve been lucky enough to publish many, many brilliant, original, and moving pieces — and there are several amongst them that could easily be included within this list. But these pieces here, these are five that, for whatever reasons, have stayed with me.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Michael Stein

If there is a common denominator among the translated fiction published in B O D Y, it is work that maintains a precarious yet exhilarating balance between wild flights of imagination, unbridled humor and grappling with an often harsh reality. Read my favorites here.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Stephan Delbos

Publishing writing you love is the greatest pleasure of editing a literary journal. It’s hard to believe B O D Y has been around for 10 years and I’m astounded by the quality and variety of writing in our archives. Herewith some of my favorites.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Joshua Mensch

It has been an enormous privilege to edit this magazine and I’m astounded by the sheer volume of great writing we’ve been entrusted with over the past ten years. The poems, stories, and essays in this selection represent, to me, what this project has really been about since the beginning: discovering great new writing.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Jan Zikmund

B O D Y, through its ties with translators, has always given space to intriguing voices from the past. When selecting my favourites on the occasion of the magazine’s ten-year anniversary, it seemed fitting to highlight three deceased poets – a Hungarian, Czech, and Russian – that deserve more attention.