by Lacey N. Dunham

 

My Taiwanese girlfriend lays her head on my breasts, her mouth shaped into words I do not understand. I want to tell her my love in a meaningful language, but when I mimic her pronunciations, she teases. “You just called me a goat.” I try simple words like numbers. “You just said death.” She traces my body and sings the names: shǒu, zhǒu, jiān, jiǎozhǐ, kuān guānjié. She giggles yīndào in my ear.

Words spill from my mouth fast and quick: solipsism, sobriquet, apotheosis, anathema, multitudinous, copse.

“English is ugly,” she says.

After we have sex for the first time and her tears dry into stains on her chapped cheeks, she whispers in my ear, “I’m going to call you Lao Po.” Her voice like a ribbon.

I ask what it means but she smiles and strokes my head, Lao Po a whisper against my neck.

I call her Mamoo, a name without meaning.

“Like the sound of a cow in English,” she laughs when I christen her.

For Valentine’s, she presses a heart-shaped glass jar of paper stars into my palm. “For my sweet Lao Po.” She explains there is an old Taiwanese myth. Make enough stars, capture them in a jar, and the person who receives it will be always in your life.

I give her three roses and a greeting card, laughing cartoon cat.

*

We do not last. We are too different, and too alike at the same time. I leave the heart-shaped jar of stars on her apartment welcome mat, bruised with a note: Mamoo—Sometimes myths are only lies. Inside, I hear her fucking another girl. They sound elated.

*

We learn new names for each other, and one day, the stars shimmer dully at my door. In her floral handwriting, she has a left a note.
     Sometimes the only truth is the lies.

 

---

Author Bio: Lacey N. Dunham’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, CHEAP POP, and The Other Stories, among others. A first-generation college graduate originally from the Midwest, she now lives in Washington, DC.

Website: www.laceyndunham.com
Twitter: @bookbent
Instagram: @lndhop

Thank you for joining us for Witness Weekends! We’re so grateful to our contributors and Lit Award winners for sharing their work, and we hope you have enjoyed this Virtual Launch Party for the Magic issue!

Our final reader, Emily Greenberg, is the winner of our 2020 Lit Award for fiction with her short story “Delivery”. This story was selected by our judge, Kristen Arnett, and held our readers captivated with Greenberg’s particular flare for world building and craft. Our Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, writes “‘Delivery’ is doing some Ray Bradbury-level world building, but what kept me hooked were the characters. The intensity and longing in this story is palpable and I enjoyed reading the story the first time I read it, but subsequent rereads have allowed me to really appreciate the internal clockwork of what Greenberg has accomplished here.”

We are thrilled to have a chance to share with you this excerpt from “Delivery”! For the complete story and conclusion, find it in the new issue, pages 103-116!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “EMILY” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Emily Greenberg’s writing is published or forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Witness Magazine, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her story “Delivery” was awarded the 2020 Witness Literary Award in Fiction, judged by Kristen Arnett. She currently lives with her partner and dog in Columbus, Ohio, where she is an MFA Candidate and Distinguished University Fellow at Ohio State.

Website: emilygreenberg.net
Twitter: @EmilyGreenberg7

Happy Witness Weekend! We are honored to be sharing readings from our Magic contributors and 2020 Lit Award Winners all month long; join us every Saturday and Sunday for new videos!

Today we have a special treat: our 2020 Lit Award first-place winner for poetry, Andrew Collard, reads from his poem “Future Ruins.” We were immediately captivated by the compelling way this poem approaches the landscape and experiences of Middle America. Our judge, Heather Lang-Cassera, writes:

Andrew Collard’s “Future Ruins” is an exceptional poem which refuses to shy away from the darkness yet is unafraid to acknowledge the strange beauties which whisper from within fissures and beyond peripheries. Collard captures complexities of contemporary life as the verse maintains its dichotomies, does not water down hardships nor loss. We explore a desperate sort of sadness, such as “what it means that I am from here // but can’t afford a home here.” Yet the work rejects didacticism, instead painting a palpable landscape, a place in which we can immerse ourselves for contemplation. This includes the work’s closing on a multifaceted image inside of a mall food court: “a shoot of grass stands through the cracked tile of the fountain / drained of water, all of its lucky pennies.” Through five vignettes, the poem zooms into and out from intimate moments, showcasing nuances of public and private topographies. When we were reading for the Witness Literary Awards late last year, we could not have foreseen the circumstances of COVID-19, which now amplify the urgency of this poem, one that, in part, realizes the deep reach of economic crisis. The timeliness of “Future Ruins” is almost eerie, perhaps a reminder that, to an extent, a great poem finds its poet, yet Collard is a rare writer who seems to have mastered both narrative and imagery, and through his dynamic writing, he addresses profound matters, acknowledges intricacies, and invites honest examination from the reader. This poem is a superb demonstration of the role of the modern writer as witness to their times.

We are so pleased to present Andrew Collard’s work in this issue!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “ANDREW” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Andrew Collard is a PhD student and instructor at Western Michigan University. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, and Nashville Review, among other journals. He currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

Twitter: @1AndrewCollard
Instagram: @1andrew_collard

 

Two Witness Weekends left! We are so thrilled to be sharing readings from our Magic issue all month long; join us every Saturday and Sunday for new videos from contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners.

This weekend, we’re celebrating work from Kristina Ten. Ten’s enchanting short story, “The Dramatic Haircut”, exists in a wild world that plunks the main character into a salon chair surrounded by birds with bladed wings. It was selected by Kristen Arnett as a runner-up in our 2020 Lit Awards for Fiction, and was a fast favorite among our readers, one of whom noted “[This story] moves swiftly from satirical and biting to gruesome, but is still darkly funny. The language is concise, not a single cut of air that doesn’t belong. It propels me forward, and I surrender to it.” In addition, our illustrious Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, writes “What I love about Ten’s work is how she balances the weird and the intensely human emotional connection to the reader. She is using the distance between magical realism and humanity to render something intensely personal and beautiful.” (Spoiler alert for our 2020 Fall issue: look for Ten’s forthcoming story “Two Hundred Ways to Disappear.” We just can’t get enough!)

We are happy to invite you to pull up a chair and enjoy our Virtual Launch Party in style with Kristina Ten!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “KRISTINA” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Kristina Ten is a Russian-American writer of short fiction and poetry, and a 2019 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, AE Science Fiction, Cosmonauts Avenue, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. You can find her at kristinaten.com or on Twitter as @kristina_ten.

 

Such a delight to be sharing readings from our Magic issue! Join us every Saturday and Sunday to watch new videos from contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners.

Today we have work from Emmy Newman, our runner-up in the 2020 Lit Awards for poetry. Of her poem “You Will See It Coming & You Won’t Run”, our judge, Heather Lang-Cassera, writes:

Emmy Newman approaches a storm of catastrophes which could have been too difficult to bear: natural disasters, unattended luggage, life-threatening illnesses, and a variety of other tragic matters. Astute gestures of kindness to the reader, however, allow us to sit in the palpable apocalyptic moment that is “You Will See It Coming & You Won’t Run.” Through masterful poetic craft—such as humor, including “the neighbor’s Chihuahua throwing its tiny body against the fence,” and unlikely couplets, which lend a comforting sense of stability to the verse—Newman is able to approach a rapid-fire narrative of topics that might otherwise be too dark, too painful, to engage. Even the frightening lack of punctuation at the conclusion of the poem, possibly signifying the end of times, is served up in good company and with comfort food, “slices of rhubarb pie on our favorite blue-edged plates.” Although we could not have foreseen the health and economic crises COVID-19 would bring to us while we were reading for the Witness Literary Awards back in late 2019, Emmy Newman’s superb poem, complete with panic-induced canned-food purchases and bedroom carpet worn thin by anxious pacing, swept me in then as it does now. Newman is a poet of true pathos, one who can skillfully cast light on the world and its complexities, urging us through our own authentic explorations of the human condition.

Enjoy!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “EMMY” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio:Emmy Newman is a current MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Cream City Review, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and currently serves as the poetry editor for Fugue.

Instagram: @she_wins_an_emmy

 

 

 

Our virtual launch party continues! We are so excited to have a chance to be sharing readings from the Magic issue all month long. Join us Saturdays and Sundays to check out new videos from our contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners. Let’s celebrate!

This Witness Weekend, we’re introducing Alex Berge’s engaging short story, “The Intruder”, which encompasses the struggle of a heartbroken office drudge to become social again, in the midst of a series of strange visits from a coffee-drinking, masked intruder… In response to this reading, our Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, notes: “This was one of those stories that I kept remembering in quiet moments of my daily life. Berge does a series of interesting movements with narrative craft here that is almost a primer on how to turn a story and develop a character at almost a subliminal level.” As with any good mystery, we’ve given you just a taste; for the complete story and conclusion, find it in the new issue, pages 16-23!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “ALEX” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Alex Berge earned his MFA in fiction from West Virginia University in 2011. He’s a member of Poems While You Wait, a non-profit writing collective, and is the Associate Editor for CRAFT Literary. He lives in Chicago with his wife.

Twitter: @AlexJohnBerge
Instagram: @alexberge

Photo courtesy of Joe Tighe

 

Welcome to our first-ever virtual launch party! We are so excited to share readings from the Magic issue each weekend. Join us every Saturday and Sunday as we post videos of our contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners reading from their work.

For our second installment of Witness Weekends, we present to you Mary Lane Potter’s essay, “In Praise of the Disappearing Body.” Inspired by Augustine’s Confessions, Potter uses the heightened language of lyric-philosophy to explore the chasm between the vulnerable body and an unknowable, cosmically distant god. The lyric nature of this nonfiction contribution really resonated with our readers; one reader mentioned that the essay reads like a poem, ultimately leaving them with “a sense of oblivion, as well as oneness. I love it!” We hope you do, too.

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “MARY” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Mary Lane Potter is the author of the novel A Woman of Salt (Counterpoint 2001) and the story collection Strangers and Sojourners (Counterpoint 2004). Her essays have appeared in Feminist Studies in Religion, SIGNS,Women’s Studies Quarterly, Tiferet, Spiritus, SUFI Journal, Leaping Clear, Minerva Rising, and others. She’s currently completing a book of essays on the body/spirit tangle.

Website: marylanepotter.com