Poetry & Fiction
We have maintained a fine record of published poetry in our print issue, selected by poetry editor Joshua Weiner, but in recent years have not been able to spare the space for fiction. With this new web magazine, we are delighted to have room once more for fiction selected by our new fiction editor Joshua Bernstein. Read our submission guidelines here. Please submit poetry and fiction via our online submissions site.
Poetry & Fiction
The Natatorium
by Lisa Locascio
But in class all she could see was Jacob, his lithe movements, the panicky heat of his body when she swam beside him and let their legs kick against each other in an ecstasy of splash.
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Poetry
Hartford
by Spencer Reece
City of gun shots, where Hartford Hospital on Jefferson Street employed my mother, a nurse, dressed in her white uniform with pearl buttons, and now employs me, forty five years later, a chaplain with a black shirt and a white clerical collar. Some nights when I sleep in the on-call room, I think I hear them page my mother’s elegant name, Loretta. “Trouble,” a nurse says, “Why is the city so troubled?”
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Morning Blessings
by David Shaddock
For Rabbi Burt Jacobson Blessed is the dog’s tongue Shamanic prayer flag Binder of vapor Harbinger of light’s arrival. Blessed is the brain stem That battled entropy All night on my behalf. Blessed are my nether, pleasure parts That double …
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Poetry
Above the Roofs of the Jewish Village
by Admiel Kosman
I and my imaginary lover hover above the roofs of the Jewish village. Above the courtyards, dairy barns, animal pens. Above the awnings of the chicken coops. Amid smells and clucking, cold air and wind muss her imaginary hair, soft, …
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Poetry
Wartime Train
by Christian Wiman
Bone-men, smoke-souls, river-wraiths, / I am, I know, no light ...
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Books
Much More Than a Historical Novel
by Jeffrey Green
It is probably impossible to imagine ourselves in the place of the Jewish survivors of World War II and the Holocaust immediately after the war, but this is exactly the task that Yehiel Grenimann, the son of survivors, set for himself. Yanosh and Eva, his central characters, were hidden on the Aryan side of Warsaw, thanks to their connection with the Polish nationalist underground. Yosef Borowski, known as Bora, the third major protagonist, was a partisan leader during the war. The novel begins with the entry of the Soviet army into Warsaw and ends with Yanosh and Eva’s imminent arrival in Australia.
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Poetry
Ruins
by Greg Miller
The city as a shifting ruin / Particularly though not exclusively / As an American phenomenon / Most of my lived life / Haunts me, blocks knocked / Down in “urban renewal” now blank...
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Poetry
Night Stop
by Chana Bloch
"He has only his open hand and his sweetly accusatory Bless you. We have only to turn our heads and he's gone...."
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Poetry
Kaffiyeh on Mississippi Avenue
by Reginald Dwayne Betts
A poem in the Winter 2012 issue of Tikkun.
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Justice & Prisons
Poetry in the Age of Mass Incarceration
by Stephen John Hartnett
As a result of the transformation of America into an incarceration nation, the now-bursting prisons have become hotbeds of testimony, poetry, art-making, and speechifying. The books of Reginald Dwanye Betts, which are part of this flood of prison-based testimony, recount the tale of a young man who entered prison as a confused sixteen-year-old but who now, more than a decade later, has embarked on a career as a writer.
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