Petr Hruška: Remembering Cormac McCarthy (20 July 1933 – 13 June 2023)

Petr Hruška: Remembering Cormac McCarthy (20 July 1933 – 13 June 2023)

The fire on the American mountainside was dying down. My thought was that horror cannot be cheated if hope is to become believable.

Andrea Hollander

Andrea Hollander

As if without a man, winter could take over. / But I loved winter, love winter still, so / what am I trying to say?

Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

My violence astonishes me some days, the way I regard the lesser / goldfinches in the lavender, each the size of a thumb, I want / to cram them into my mouth

Jeanne Wagner

Jeanne Wagner

I would tell him I told the officer you didn’t rape me. Because I was awake that morning before six. Because I was dressed for work. For the world.

Michael Mark

Michael Mark

Trust my inabilities. They are / reliable as gold. Count on the / gravity of my fragility. It will / always let you down.

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The Summer Issue | 2023

The Summer Issue | 2023

“When you read this work, I hope you’ll be, as I am, moved by how lost we each find ourselves, whether in dark forests or bright cities, as we navigate individual landscapes of grief and want and the confounding joy of living. May you delight in the journeys plotted here, forward and back, sometimes tracing the circles we pace in our inescapable and baffling humanity. In each of these voices, may you recognize your own voice, the strange human voice we share and cannot shake.” — Francesca Bell, Guest Editor

Read the Editorial »

Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

My violence astonishes me some days, the way I regard the lesser / goldfinches in the lavender, each the size of a thumb, I want / to cram them into my mouth

Read Now »

Jeanne Wagner

I would tell him I told the officer you didn’t rape me. Because I was awake that morning before six. Because I was dressed for work. For the world.

Read Now »

Andrea Hollander

As if without a man, winter could take over. / But I loved winter, love winter still, so / what am I trying to say?

Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

My violence astonishes me some days, the way I regard the lesser / goldfinches in the lavender, each the size of a thumb, I want / to cram them into my mouth

Jeanne Wagner

I would tell him I told the officer you didn’t rape me. Because I was awake that morning before six. Because I was dressed for work. For the world.

Michael Mark

Trust my inabilities. They are / reliable as gold. Count on the / gravity of my fragility. It will / always let you down.

Adam Berlin

He holds the cigarette far out on his fingers. Like they teach in acting class. Tight to the chest. Tough guy. Tip of the fingers. Aristocrat.

Nathaniel Eddy

Let’s pretend it wasn’t fleeing but instead the curiosity of a flame. A month in Mexico, the details lost but for a few memories, mementos. The copper bowl, purchased from a woman kneeling by the side of a road. A milky looking scar, thread thin, drawn into the muscle of your shoulder.

Sándor Jászberényi

I was born a feral beast.

At the time of my birth, I tore my mother apart. It wasn’t on purpose. I think the circumstances caused it. There was a lot of blood in the hospital room.

My father, who gutted animals as part of his occupation, couldn’t bear to look.

He needed two dark beers and two shots of liquor to quiet the horror inside him.

Gaurav Monga

This Radha, unlike the one I spend most of my waking life with, drives a car with impeccable accuracy, almost as if she has eyes at the back of her head. This Radha, though cold and calculating, has been having sex with many men behind my back. 

Krisztina Tóth

The screaming could be heard in the outside corridor, someone had moved house out of me, never to return.

J.W.Goll

J.W.Goll

When Jack Mendenhall returns from Vietnam, Wendy thinks she is interested. She likes tough boys with swagger, dirty mouths, and nasty imaginations.

Diane Simmons

Diane Simmons

There must be thousands of us non-Southerners with similar secret histories, people who profited from the crime of slavery and continue to do so.

Siegfried Mortkowitz

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

Marina Porras

They are women who want to look into the mirror and be satisfied with their reflection. Envy is born when you look into the mirror and don’t like what you see there. Everything about this sin begins with the eyes.

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.

Art

Interview with Artist Padma Rajendran

Padma Rajendran’s works on fabric experiment with the clash and combination of patterning and storytelling. She received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and teaches drawing at Vassar College.

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.