Author: rebeccaslehmann

From the Author: Michael Balint was a psychotherapist in the Object Relations school. His ideas about the effects of early development are moving and also were ground-breaking, building on the importance of what Freud called the pre-genital or pre-Oedipal phase. Chiefly, his concept of an early state of experience that exists before words has inspired… Continue reading Gram Joel Davies

Introduction Did he eat my heart whole, or bite by bite? Did he wash it down with milk, or another boy’s piss? Where is he? Is he still alive? If he is, does he still love me? If he is, and he does, would he tell me? If he is, and he does, and he… Continue reading Thomas Hobohm

The Border Crossing Point A river marks the border. Narva, burned over and over. The lake separates one country from another. Narva, razed over and over. How do you measure 98% of a city destroyed—what instrument counts the missing shoes by the door, the unharvested root vegetables shellshocked in the garden? They left the river,… Continue reading Amanda Maret Scharf

The New World (2015) Columbus said the world was a big tit, and he wanted to go to the top— I packed my bags in silence but just as smug Columbus said we were in Eden we made it but I don’t buy it— something is still rotten in this state Show me a hero… Continue reading Marina Blitshteyn

Contempt for Indianapolis It was May something-or-other, the year of our Lord whatever, when you arrived with an overnight bag & a joint copped from a Music Education Ph.D. dropout. Could only visit for 24-hours, you said, had more important food on your plate. Not me. I was depleted, my fields canned-soup salty. It was… Continue reading Pablo Piñero Stillmann

Inheritance Wedded first to heterosexuality, second to my father, my mother cursed me to a lifetime of uncooked vegetables. As a child, I stood by her in the kitchen while she beheaded fish, slid a blade along their spines like soothing a colic, extracted gallbladders to stop the flesh from bittering. You must learn this… Continue reading Ngoc Pham

ANGEL CORE // OUR WORD IS VENGEANCE On August 6th and 9th, 1945, the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on civilian population centers in Japan. Somewhere between 129,000-226,000 people were killed. The Demon Core, a subcritical sphere of plutonium, was intended to be used in a third bomb to be dropped on… Continue reading Nora Hikari

Callisto applied classics I woke up brilliant in a forest chock full of new intelligences the woven nets of scent dragged me miles from myself Dizzying in the same way trying to grasp the horizon makes a person feel sick & giddy Suddenly the thought I have a bank account lands like a lash of… Continue reading Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

Sleep Paralysis A blob has neither form nor content and for every head of lettuce there’s a natural basket so to rotate on two axes at the same time is its wish. You know that you exist when if you flip a switch what changes changes for the better. God said order in the court… Continue reading Heikki Huotari

Devil in the Window Long swath of green she used to mow, Aunt Billie raking behind. She has just stood on the back steps gripping the rail. Repeating objects. Sunsets. Hand clippers. Georgette Heyer. The Antique Road Show/tv trundled back to its closet home. Who no longer dusts. Who no longer climbs the basement stairs.… Continue reading Susan Grimm