Everyone wanted a bone. Every man
sailed to the far east to fish for bones.
—Yeji Ham

In Issue 13, the body is explored, operated upon, inscribed, made into potions, transformed into currency, turned inside out. The works in this issue explore and transgress the boundaries between death and life, organic and inorganic, material and spiritual. They reveal the body as the primary cultural site of the interplay of power, exploitation, self-determination, commerce, and our most deeply held fears and beliefs.

Stories by Soren A. Gauger, Yeji Ham, and Thomas Walton invite you to explore the wilderness within, harbors full of bones, and houses whose inhabitants are subjected to surreal experiments.

Poems by TJ Barnum, Darren Demaree, and Shannon Connor Winward reveal how life continues amidst death, how we exist in the aftermath of what we do to our own bodies and others’, and how female bodies have been imbued by western culture with everything except agency.

Visual art by Roger Camp and Bill Wolak asks you to consider the violence we do to bodies through representation and objectification.

So put your feet up and prepare to shiver, shudder, smile, and be stunned into stillness by these bodies that are many things, but never simply what they seem on the surface. —Deborah Steinberg, editor

Contents

Bleeding Mannequins by Roger Camp — visual art

The Dollhouse by Thomas Walton — fiction

Junk Yard Morgue by TJ Barnum — poetry

Emily As the Morning Stalls by Darren Demaree — poetry

Two Collages by Bill Wolak — visual art

The Black Boar by Soren A. Gauger — fiction

A Bucket of Coins by Yeji Ham — fiction

Innocence Elixir by Shannon Connor Winward — poetry