Fjords Review & C&R Press are at the Miami Book Fair! In town? Come play ping pong, chill in some of our rad bean bag chairs, and chat with us & the folks at Exile Books!
RMH
tumblr dot com
Cosimo Galluzzi
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

shark vs the universe
Game of Thrones Daily
Mike Driver
Three Goblin Art
DEAR READER
Today's Document
Stranger Things
Keni
macklin celebrini has autism
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
almost home

Kaledo Art

No title available

⁂
Xuebing Du
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

seen from United Kingdom

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Canada

seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom

seen from China

seen from United States
seen from Czechia
seen from United States
seen from Morocco

seen from Morocco

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@fjordsreview
Fjords Review & C&R Press are at the Miami Book Fair! In town? Come play ping pong, chill in some of our rad bean bag chairs, and chat with us & the folks at Exile Books!
The shortlist of nominees for the prestigious Man Booker literary award was announced Tuesday in London. On the one hand, as the Man Booker committee noted, it’s a diverse list. On the other hand, two of the short-listed nominees are American, which could make some British authors unhappy.
Shortlist Revealed For 2015 Man Booker Prize
PROTOCOL
by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher
At the training center they’re teaching us “roll over” and “play dead.” We’d thought, beforehand, that it was one thing: “roll over and play dead,” but we knew so little back then. In “roll over,” for instance, there’s this trick to look continually harmless so as not to draw attention to oneself, but not too harmless, as that would cause one to think maybe your harmless behavior is a form of resisting. As well, “play dead” is problematic, because the protocol is to kill one twice for resisting. It’s important, therefore, to play dead in a “twice dead” way, as being dead in a singular, or a “just now dead” way could be considered resisting. Also, if one is attempting the “having done nothing” before being told to do nothing, it is important to know that this can be considered a form of resisting. Breathing, too, is also listed as a form of resisting, with the explanation that it’s performing without the express command to perform. Care should be taken, though, because performing when told to perform is also listed as a form of resisting. After having been killed, care must be taken to “roll over” and “play dead” because supposed inability to hear commands is no excuse for not obeying commands.
IN GUADALAJARA, ONE OF US WILL EMERGE AS THE FEARLESS LEADER
by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher
From the beginning, I wasn't good at following the rules. You just kept making ordinances, though, and I wondered if you liked seeing them broken.
First, there were the specifications for your office, which must always be stocked with fine wines and expensive chocolates. Then there was the code of conduct at the house, that seemingly endless list of warnings mounted above the kitchen table: If you leave the gate unlatched just once. If you look inside any of the cabinets.
It goes without saying that resistance is often about subtlety. So don't ask me why your coffee tastes different this morning.
Don't ask why there's so much sorrow in the trees.
A new interview with Stephanie Dickinson, author of Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg, has been published on Fjords’ website. Interviewer Kristina Marie Darling delves deep into the rich text, and Dickinson’s complex, accomplished, and complicated past - as well as her ties to Seberg herself. Check it out here.
News From the War, the Trees Catch Fire
by Michael Salcman
The annual fireworks display’s gone wrong. Rockets launched in seeming safety from a barge send red and blue florets and golden pinwheels into neighbor’s trees, where sparklers fall like hot rain trimming the elms with gray wreaths and blackened fruit, the leaves aflame before their funerals come a few months more. The cinders cartwheel into a field on the banks of the Rhode, transforming a Maryland river into the Rhône with patches of red, Dutch green and mauve.
The barrage goes on all night. I can almost touch the colors streaking the portlights of our boat. We turn off the latest news on the radio so as not to offend other sailors, while hoping the pasture grass won’t light from a stray spark or misdirected rocket. We sit disconnected, so independent in our little boats we no longer fear the glow, grateful that nothing catches. When the darkness returns, the noise of laughing voices spoils across the water, mixes with shouts and horns blaring at holiday’s end. The Fourth, a close call, then silence.
EACH THING THAT HAS BEEN TAKEN (WINCHESTER MANSION: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA)
By Frank Paino
The dead do not care if their clothes catch & shred on the wooden ribs of cypress hedge that guard the widow’s six-acre mansion. What need is there for cover when they move, resplendent in their own raw gore, across the vast scalped lawn in its shroud of rusted starlight?
They stumble or crawl past the Serpent Fountain & viridian crescent, past the bronze insult of “Chief Little Fawn” grasping his impotent bow. They reopen their wounds against the rough skin of painted redwood shingles, scale four scalloped stories to the roof of this puzzle home & one after one, claw their way down the soot-black throats of its seventeen brick chimneys.
The dead are hell-bent on taking back each thing that has been taken…each missing limb whose absence echoes in the silver faces of two hundred Victorian mirrors... each gaping chest that shrieks like a window left cracked in a prairie storm…each shattered harp of rib & gristled spleen... each this or that blown off or blown open by a Model 1873.
They have taken a vow to take their time, a blood toast raised by each in turn to a slow descent into madness for the one whose fortune was built on swift lever action, whose days & nights of ceaseless hammer-fall sum up her childish scheme of confusion or conciliation.
The dead have learned to savor the meanwhile, to take the measure of incremental decline. There is time enough to navigate the corridors & twisted switchbacks, count to thirteen at each spindle & webbed window, rifle through scrawled séance notes kept by a wizened hand. Time enough for each to squeeze the old woman’s sluggish heart as she rocks in her satin bed, to keep her alive one more night & one more night— until the last muzzle flash has been swallowed by starless dark. Until the last cursed bullet has been named.
[Note: Sarah Winchester, widow & heiress to her husband’s firearms fortune, ordered continuous construction on her mansion in the belief it would either confuse or appease the spirits of all those killed by the Winchester Model 1873 rifle. Construction ceased upon her death, 38 years after the project commenced.]
Fjords’ special Women’s Edition is here! A download is free, and features excellent guest editors, stunning artwork, and thought-provoking pieces. Download it here.
Fjords Review is officially looking for more book reviewers! If you’re interested in reading books and talking about them, please send a letter of interest to [email protected].
I want to mourn Yi-Fen Chou, the Chinese American woman poet who doesn’t exist.
“What kind of poetry would [Yi-Fen Chou] write, if she were real and not just a white man’s fantasy?”— Quaint Magazine Editor, Soleil Ho, addresses the man who pretends to be a Chinese-American woman poet, wearing her identity “like a pair of boxer briefs” in order to snag a spot in Best American Poetry 2015.
Fjords’ special Women’s Edition is here! A download is free, and features excellent guest editors, stunning artwork, and thought-provoking pieces. Download it here.
Fjords’ special Women’s Edition is here! A download is free, and features excellent guest editors, stunning artwork, and thought-provoking pieces. Download it here.
Le Corbusier designed glimmering high-rises while Salvador Dali painted implausible landscapes, yet they had one thing in common: both embraced the golden ratio as gospel and used it in their work. But could it be possible that these two 20th century masters had fallen for nothing more than the art world equivalent of an old wive’s tale?
Does the Golden Ratio Not Measure Up?
Peter
by Ingrid Wenzler A heavy fog, typical of that time of year and Peter, looking like he knew where he was going, was pushing an off-white pram so lightly that it seemed to glide on and on ahead of him. The night was cold, and there was a thin layer of moisture on the sidewalk, the pram, the heavy branches overhead. Peter tugged at the hood of the pram and, out of habit, tucked the corners of Anna’s top cover under her shoulders. He remembered his father coming in at night to kiss him and adjust his blankets; he thought of how large his father’s arms had looked to him and realized, for the first time, how his large his arms must look to Anna. Coming to one of the all-women’s dormitories, he hesitated and considered going back the way he came, but no, he would continue. He turned the pram to the left and followed the low wall that led to the dance studio, one of those modern buildings, with glass on all sides. The studio was lighted, that pale green of swimming pools, and, even through the fog, Peter could see a figure beside the bar, lifting her leg. So she was there, but, of course, he had known she would be. He steered the pram off of the sidewalk, onto the grass, and for a long time, he watched, while she leaned one way, then another, submerged in her way, moving slowly. He let go of the pram’s handle and moved closer. She crossed the studio and opened a large, covered basin. Seeming to be in a daze, she reached into the basin, covered herself with its contents, began to dance, and with each movement, sent clouds of white dust flying above her, all around. She tracked the same white, chalk-like dust over the floor of the studio, and Peter thought of peacock-headed princes and their child-brides, of swords, of pride, of fear, of snow rising and falling in the wind—a world so far from his own. She turned, facing the front of the studio, and lowered herself to the ground, panting and moving her hands over one of her shoes, the bottom then the sides, the dirty and frayed material, and her foot beneath. She stretched her foot then stood, looked from side to side, and, as if she has taken too long with her shoe and wanted to make up for it, began to spin around and around, so fast that he wanted to touch her waist and pull her toward him from the hips. His hand, since he had left the pram had been beneath his dick, scarcely touching, but seeing her spin, he had held tighter, not thinking, only feeling, until he heard a cry. Without meaning to, before he had put her cry into words and thought I have left the pram, it is behind me and that is Anna crying, Anna, my baby, is crying, and my wife is at home, without me he had echoed Anna’s cry, so that his cry became her cry and then another, final cry, sustained, caught in the night and the fog.
Call for submissions!
Fjords Review is looking for interviews, and art/film/book reviews for the next issue. Submit work here.
Libby Vanderploeg