Greetings from the New Editors
Hello! I’m Keith Jamieson, Euphony’s new Fiction Editor. I and the new Poetry Editor, Yini Shi, are hoping to make the website a more integral part of Euphony than it has been in the past. That means more unique content and more frequent updates. To start off, you’ll find below a new, web-exclusive story by Raphaela Weissman. Please check back to find out more in the coming weeks, as well as to download a copy of our upcoming Winter 2011 issue!
Fiction: “I Thought I Was Going to Die” by Raphaela Weissman
i. In The Elevator
I heard a rumbling. I thought the other guy heard it too, the old man with the shopping bag, wearing a sweater vest and a hat that used to have some kind of special name when he was younger, before my time— fisherman’s cap. No, sandcatcher. Something like that.
It was a special rumbling. It’s always a special sound, when I think I’m going to die. I wanted to ask the old man, can’t you tell that there’s something different about that, that it’s coming from the bowels of the elevator shaft? He’s older than I am and has probably been riding elevators since they were made differently. Maybe rumbling louder than this was what an elevator ride used to sound like; maybe you were taking your life in your hands every time you set foot inside one of these, and they had a cute name for them, death boxes or the devil’s dumbwaiter. I’m just guessing. I would have asked him. It would have been the last thing I ever learned.
Poetry: “Nothing New” by M.R. Harris
Brave new world when this mustachioed,
tousle-haired old geezer
met this brash young rich kid with the
slicked spikes and soul patch,
mister ennuied-with-the-world
begat the devil-may-care millionaire,
and Paige typesetters melted
into West Egg moonshine.
He put down the three martinis
and clamped on a New England hard-hat,
then went out frothing foam,
having drowned a mass
of brave and witless men
in a sea of electrified fencing.
Meanwhile the kid woke up
one morning at age forty
and found he’d misplaced his wife
and his entire digestive system,
down the tubes like so
many lost countries.
Author Update: John Sibley Williams’ “A Pure River”
A recent contributor to our Spring 2010 issue, John Sibley Williams’ chapbook A Pure River was published this month. It is available from The Last Automat Press. See more of John’s work at his website, http://theartofraining.com/.
Poetry: “Troublesome Phenomena about the Room” by Andrew S. Chen
It starts with the changing of a light bulb.
Continues with the putting of jackets
on hangers, the closing of a closet door.
The Teflon flakes off in the pan,
saturates the day with carcinogens.
Scrub it, rinse it, dump it down the drain.
Cultivate that blackened bottom taste.
How well the household chores agree
with a dark night, the spindling fix of a seam.
The sad thing about private lives
is they go unsung to the grave,
as funeral attendees steal toasted paninis
and banana bread. What will become
of the photographs that live on?
Shoebox. Nightstand. Blaze of glory.
Every letter you write from now on
will bear the stamp of this exercise.
Think of how it will be carried as wind
carries a sailboat, how you ought
to read it backward, word by word.
Spring 2010 Issue
Our Spring issue is on the way from the printers and can be downloaded by clicking here: Download Spring 2010 Issue. We hope you enjoy this latest collection. Pick up your copy on campus, or around Hyde Park!
Poetry Reading: “Cash for Clunkers” by Philip Fried
As a preview of our upcoming Spring Issue, we are happy to share with you a recording of one of the featured poems: “Cash for Clunkers” by Philip Fried.
Please press the link below to hear our Fiction Editor, Levi Foster, read this poem
(Note that the recording is somewhat quiet, so you may have to raise the volume on your computer.)
Poetry: “sudden prayer for the squirrel on the powerline” by B.J. Best
sizzling acrobat, you try the wire
from pine to pine. potential flashforward,
your claws cut like scimitars across the line
yet you know nothing of capacitors, of relays
and dynamos, or how we use dinosaurs’ bones
to make our debauched suns glow.
but you know about flux and resistance:
the lean of a limb, the arc of a leap,
the force to pry an acorn from its cap.
I want to know what it’s like to walk
along the electric-white finger of god;
I want to suck the creosote from the pole
that sprung like a railroad tie at the edge
of the yard, an eiffel tower of light,
the hum that stifles all cries.
squirrel, I like how you close all the circuits,
tying the juice into irreconcilable knots of twine,
as easily as I can call god a liar,
as easily as I drink this glass of wine.
Technical Issues (Resolved!)
Our submissions email account is momentarily down. We’ve got tech support working on it, but anything sent in the past 24 hours didn’t make its way to us. We’ll update this post when the account is working again. Thanks for your patience!
**Sorry for the delay on the update, but everything is up and running again! Send submissions to euphony@uchicago.edu
Poetry: “Ablutions,” by Josiah Bancroft
I come to
the mirror,
a smug,
run animal,
extracting
my eyes, teeth,
rub the dent
of rings
into the sink.
I put a comb
to my head
because I’m
flirting again,
and catching
blown kisses
in my beard.
