📣 Calling our Boston-area friends! 📣 We hope you'll join us TOMORROW for the launch of AGNI 102! We've got a stellar lineup: readings by Mary Cappello, Askold Melnyczuk, Hera Naguib, and Gish Jen, and live music by Javier Jeffer y su Conjunto Obaye. More info👇

There is a rift, in our troubled century, between imaginative writing and the various mainstream U.S. cultures. . .Can fiction, poetry, and essays be a meaningful force for truth? Read "Mattering," the Editor’s Note from 🔥AGNI 102🔥 by William Pierce👇

"For the most part the students just treat it as recess: the younger ones throw things and bark at each other, the older ones scroll on their phones. But once in a while, he tells her, a class catches on." ~🔥NEW at AGNI Online🔥 "Poetry Lesson" by Katie Shireen Assef

The treat I got on Halloween--the new issue of @agnimagazine.bsky.social with my translations of Christine Guinard's poems. She's a French poet whose family fled to France during La Retirada, when half a million Spaniards escaped Franco's army. Her family's stories echo through her voice.

We converge in the auditorium. Circle on the scarred stage. It smells of paint and its slippery cousin turpentine, also, of forgotten oranges and pancake make-up. ~from "Drama Kids" by Katie Williams AGNI Online

📣 Calling our Boston-area friends! 📣 We hope you'll join us ONE WEEK FROM TONIGHT for the launch of AGNI 102! We've got a stellar lineup: readings by Mary Cappello, Askold Melnyczuk, Hera Naguib, and Gish Jen, and live music by Javier Jeffer y su Conjunto Obaye. More info👇

Say it is a geranium in a black pot or a warbler on the shoulder that make the difference in how we do what we do when we do it. As if the clouds never existed, as if rain hadn’t come. ~from "How It Is" by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno AGNI 47

My work is what you might call whatever— “Whatever sells the pies,” my boss says. Turns out I’m a natural. A Midwestern smile proves to be a mighty whatever. The pies fly. ~from "In Ordinary Time" by Anthony Carelli AGNI Online

I love @agnimagazine.bsky.social so it’s a dream to be in here! Available at most bookstores, like a lit journal should be. My gratitude to the editors 🧿

A new poem in the new issue of Agni @agnimagazine.bsky.social 🫨

ICYMI: AGNI 102 is here! The threaded objects of Lia Purpura front an issue intent on noticing, holding, and putting forward 🔥

Forty-two to forty-two and the big blond chick kept mumbling “Eskimo.” She’d bump Heather’s hip and say, “Eskimo.” She’d drop her shoulder and push off and say, “Eskimo.” ~from "The Black Bear Month" by David Crouse AGNI 91

💫 Excited AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social published The Sundial Pilgrimage online! This story also features in their upcoming magazine, AGNI Issue 102. Thanks to the editors, especially Mary O'Donoghue & Bill Pierce Click if you like stories about feral architects agnionline.bu.edu/fiction/the-...

Amazing essay by Donald Quist in @agnimagazine.bsky.social agnionline.bu.edu/essay/stone-...

Over at @agnimagazine.bsky.social, my buddy @donaldquist.bsky.social just published one of *the* great essays on MLK's legacy re: young Black men living in his shadow. Take and read: agnionline.bu.edu/essay/stone-...

A section of The Times, a shallow tub, A chamois cloth, a sickle slip of pumice, Green oil from the least expensive jug, A dry wreath’s worth of eucalyptus ~from "A Homecoming" by Daniel Bosch AGNI Online

I’m not a star-fucker. I’m a girl who makes him pay attention. I’m white and large-thighed. I’m new passion. I’m cougar-eyed just like him. I’m desperate for peace. I’m a lover, not a warrior. I’m courageous. I’m rain. ~from "A Friday Desdemona" by Margo Berdeshevsky AGNI Online

Because in those days there were no words for such things I took handfuls of vitamins and slept with a trumpet flower under my pillow ~from "Positive" by Rynn Williams AGNI Online

When I whistle, a white horse in Central Park lifts its head, wickering. I lie down like Nebucadnezzer to graze. My lips kissing a subway grate five hundred miles away, years too late, a forelock whisks my cheek. ~from "A Story" by Melissa Green AGNI Online

The galley stinks of sour milk. She has to shoulder the cabin door to budge it. The bed is lumpy. She has a strong sense that someone died here. ~from "Sea State" by Niall McArdle AGNI Online

Light is light, it is not kindness, but if kindness had a colour, perhaps it would be this—yes, you turn away impatiently, yet it’s you who cannot bear to crush a snail ~from "Kindness" by Tim Upperton AGNI Online

A novel is propelled by an engine made of trouble, and it can be hard to think up enough trouble to keep the wheels turning so that one thing leads to another, and another. ~from "Money, Deadlines, and Water" by Alice Mattison AGNI Online

In the book of optical illusions first you see the ancient one butting heads with the rabbit then you see the young woman carrying the duck. ~from "Soul" by Rebekah Remington AGNI Online

This is how I spend my days: sitting in a chair, boots on, stays on, hair in pins, plying my needle as a bee plies the blossom: in and out, in and out. Wind me up and I mutter all the Holy Holies you wish. ~from "The Wild Child" by Rikki Ducornet AGNI 62

Here is the fossil as a perfume. Here is a bone picked clean and whittled into a tiny tall ship. Here are magicians teaching secrets to contortionists. Here is colored glass on fire. ~from "Ex Libris" by Megan Harlan AGNI Online

"Finally, I have become indifferent to nostalgia—that primary emotion of my first forty years for which George Michael’s 'Careless Whisper' and Sade’s 'Is It a Crime' were like anthems." 🔥NEW🔥 at AGNI Online: "On the Train" by Taije Silverman.

October rolls in the grass spilling apples from its lips Hands riding in automobiles pull at the sky A lawyer wakes up watches a woman walking across her back lawn Someone drifts to a kitchen faucet bumps against spoons ~from "October" by Alan Britt AGNI 3

Amazed as windows, our eyes the wine-blue of water with nothing under it, it’s all we can do to keep loving you, rosy-fingered whatever, as we might an ice cube bumper-carring on a scarred griddle iron. ~from "Rosy-Fingered Whatever" by Chad Davidson AGNI Online

sweet honey pink, down the side of his neck is what I do in the car. This is what I do with his racquet: unzip the cover, test the spring, push my skirt up my thigh with the metal handle. ~from "Running My Mouth" by Sara McKinnon AGNI Online

The daily shock of the almost death persists too long in memory. A near automobile accident, a step back from the crumbling ledge of the odd cliff. ~from "In Defense of Los Angeles" by Eachan Holloway AGNI Online

TONIGHT! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

Two rows of footprints lead to the door. This means her husband is not alone. Pine needles have fallen into the prints. This is a type of clock: maybe three needles fall per hour. ~from "Kiss a Robber" by Magdalena Zyzak AGNI 78

Beach-plums by the bath-house drop. Split in rippling heat. Collapse. The island hasn’t seen a sheep or a thief in a century. ~from "When You Ask Again" by Miriam O’Neal AGNI 50

It is in that moment of waiting for the opening of the door that the house takes shape, a promised gift in a Christmas package wrapped in colorful glittering ribbons—the kind of gift I never received as a child. ~from "Elegy for a Fabulous World" by Alta Ifland AGNI 66

1 WEEK FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

The serial-killer abstract-expressionist meets me on top of a steep, snow-covered mountain. It is all arranged. ~from "Five Serrated Dreams" by Emily Mitchell AGNI Online

Moaning is the minute between dusk and dark, the first stars, barely a breeze, a dead armadillo drying by the road ~from "12 Lines After Leadbelly" by Jason Labbe AGNI Online

From AGNI Online "Coogee to Bronte Walk" by Judy Rowley My favorite translation of coogee, which is said to have come from the Bidigal word koo-jah, is the smell of seaweed drying.

2 WEEKS FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

Two lovers talking on the phone, at night, ear pressed to the receiver pressed to ear for the half whispering voices that are clearer for being quiet, even more intimate somehow for being far away. ~from "Premonition" by Alan Shapiro AGNI 57

This is what Davis wanted: songs composed of improvised passages, where off-the-cuff solos, as much as ensembles or prepared themes, defined the composition. ~from "When It Was New: Miles Davis’s 'So What'" by Aaron Gilbreath AGNI Online

I study her hip bones, mid-day. Something crackles through the trees—no, a withering. I let the last malanga rot on the counter because it is easier not to have to cut another thing open. ~from "Mal de Ojo" by Leslie Sainz AGNI 91

She laughs because Jonathan said this would be better, going to the altar with one shame instead of two, having the child so she can wear the secondhand champagne dress. She laughs because the mirror blares that she is not a virgin. ~from "Seam Ripper" by Kathryn Hill AGNI Online

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The kitchen weeps onion because the cook is dead. Pans strike chorus, and the ladles keep a knock-kneed stride. Burners gleam more brightly. Chives, chives, and chives. Everyone seems so tired, but the diners cannot sleep. ~from "The Kitchen Weeps Onion" by James Arthur AGNI Online

I know the farm on cold mornings—the white sky hangs low over the barnyard and the air snaps. Smooth black pebbles of yesterday’s shit scatter like buckshot under my boots. ~from "What I Know, What I Don’t" by Kerrie Kemperman AGNI Online

Only words hurt us now. No saint or hero, Landing at night from the conspiring seas, Brings dangerous tokens to the new era— Their sad names linger in the histories. ~from "Glengormley" by Derek Mahon AGNI 19

“Wanna be my friend?” cried Bridget astride the pavement—white leotards worn web-thin in the crotch, glitzy tanktop smeared with BBQ chip dust, Kewpie doll curls, scuffed pink sandals. ~from "A Study in Sequins" by Ben Miller AGNI 63

The voices in the radio. They seeped out from the Zenith’s woven thatch. They weren’t the voice my sister heard. She’d fall asleep before Lone Ranger. ~from "Imaginary Friends" by Erica Funkhouser AGNI 66

1. Corinne pauses when she writes the date. The year could be anything, really. Two thousand whatever. Nineteen ninety-something. She takes her elderly mother to the doctor. One of the tests is, “What’s today’s date?” ~from "Lou" by Susan Jackson Rodgers AGNI 91