SALT HILL JOURNAL

Salt Hill is a literary journal publishing outstanding new fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and art. Now over 15 years old, the magazine is published by writers affiliated with the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.

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an excerpt from Ciaran Berry's Outside Riverdale Manor from Salt Hill 28.

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here's an excerpt from Ben Mirov's Destruction Manual [Salt Hill 28]

why not order your copy now?

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SPECIAL PREVIEW OF SALT HILL 29

Salt Hill 29—our spring 2012 issue and one of our largest to date—is evidence of how capricious and flimsy our perceived reality is, how gray and clouded the separation between phenomenological existence and the science fictions looming behind it. Either which way, the work in this issue pursues the out-there dimensions. Stories from J. Robert Lennon, Katie Jean Shinkle, Carlos Franz, Chiara Barzini, Jacob White, Renee Gladman, and Ulrich Haarbürste alienate the familiar and normalize the bizarre. Poetry by Jeff Alessandrelli, Christy Crutchfield, Patrick Lawler, Pablo Medina, Emily Pettit, and G. C. Waldrep accesses matrices of language to come alive with insights into outer and inner worlds. UFO landings, LCD pillowcases, 3D Darwinism, and Cartesian-screen videogames are on view in artwork by Faye Moorhouse, Rudy Rucker, Paul Slocum, and Aaron $hunga. Rivka Galchen talks 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ben Marcus pines for Heidi Julavits-decoded PowerPoints. Here in the Golden Snowball capital of Earth, the winter of the Mayan apocalypse has been mild to an eerie degree; we’ve been transported to a fine-weathered parallel realm, an unseasonably utopic Syracuse. Come along for the ride: “Enter Xenocave!”

TO ORDER A COPY: www.salthilljournal.com

CONTRIBUTORS

POETRY

Jeff Alessandrelli, Sarah Blackman, Travis Brown, Caroline Cabrera, Jennifer Chapis, Caroline Crew, Christy Crutchfield, Amy Gerstler, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Patrick Haas, Matthew Hotham, Patrick Lawler, Dolly Lemke, Tony Mancus, Kyle McCord, Karyna McGlynn, Pablo Medina, Simone Muench, Emily Pettit, John Pursley III, Matthew Rohrer, Tone Škrjanec (trans. Ana Pepelnik and Matthew Rohrer), Abraham Smith, Gale Marie Thompson, G. C. Waldrep, Joshua Young

FICTION

Chiara Barzini, Michael Bible, Carlos Franz (trans. Jonathan Blitzer), Renee Gladman, Ulrich Haarbürste, Michael Kelly, J. Robert Lennon, Helen Rubinstein, Katie Jean Shinkle, Tom Whalen, Jacob White

NONFICTION

Jonathan Blitzer, Interview of Rivka Galchen by Danny Magariel, Interview of Ben Marcus by Rachel Abelson

ART

Brian Cypher, Faye Moorhouse, Rudy Rucker, Aaron $hunga, Paul Slocum  

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New Sentences for the Testing of Typewriters by J. Robert Lennon

Fetching killjoy Mavis Wax was probed on the quay.

“Yo, never mix Zoloft with Quik,” gabs Doc Jasper.

One zany quaff is vodka mixed with grape juice and blood.

Zitty Vicki smugly quipped in her journal, “Fay waxes her butt.”

Hot Wendy gave me quasi-Kreutzfeld-Jacob pox.

Jack’s pervy moxie quashed Bob’s new Liszt fugue.

I backed Zevy’s qualms over Janet’s wig of phlox.

Tipsy Bangkok panjandrums fix elections with quivering zeal.

Mexican juntas, viewed in fog, piqued Zachary, killed Rob.

Jaywalking Zulu chieftains vex probate judge Marcy Quinn.

Twenty-six Excedrin helped give Jocko quite a firm buzz.

Racy pics of bed hijinx with glam queen sunk Val.hy Paxil? Jim’s Bodega stocked no quince-flavor Pez.

Wavy-haired quints of El Paz mock Jorge by fax.

Two phony quacks of God bi-exorcize evil mojo.

What joker put seven dog lice in my Iraqi fez box?

From Video Game Hints, Tricks, and Cheats.  Lennon's story "Strawberries" appears in Salt Hill 29. 

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We love lit mags talking shop.  Here's a great interview with GMR's Senior Editor Neil Shepard at Portal del Sol.  "San Sebastian," a story by GMR's fiction editor--Jacob White--appears in Salt Hill 29.

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Internal Monument by G.C. Waldrep

A man was sad—for himself, maybe for someone else, maybe he had lost something, or someone—so he hired some workmen to erect a monument. He was not surprised when they came calling early one morning, while he was still in bed, but he was surprised when, with a practiced slash, the foreman opened his chest. "We build the monument inside," the foreman said. "But who will see the monument?" the man protested. "It's a monument for feeling, not for seeing," the foreman replied.

Read more at Poetry Daily.  

G.C. Waldrep's "Agoraphobia National Park" can be found in Salt Hill 29.  Waldrep's latest collection--Your Father on the Train of Ghosts, a collaboration with John Gallaher--is available from BOA Editions.

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Work by Faye Moorhouse, an artist featured in Salt Hill 29 

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When Holding You Isn't Enough by Katie Jean Shinkle

Our Father has his head in his hands, he is weeping into his hands, he is rubbing his eyes with the back of his gloves riddled with fiber glass and wood splinters and mud mud mud and wiping his hands on the backs of his pants that we cannot tell are jeans until much later when our Mother has to cut them off of his legs because they are melted and singed and gristled on his body and he is laughing laughing laughing and weeping weeping, he is weeping when we enter the room. Mother is holding him like a baby, cradling his head on her chest like a frothy infant, they are a uroboros together, wedded in weeping and laughing, they are both weeping and both laughing and speaking softly and Father is filled with soot and ash and smoke and mud and dirt and stink and now Mother’s dress is filled with soot and ash and smoke and mud and dirt and stink and Father’s hair is standing up on end and matted and there is a smell of burnt hair on everything, burnt wood on everything, burnt garbage, sweet like animal flesh, on everything everything. He is yelling now, he is yelling and kicking the blankets on the bed and the sheets are getting dirty and the comforters are dirty and all of the blankets and he is kicking the blankets off the bed and he is soiling every surface, the only clean part of his person are his eyes where he was wearing goggles that could not withstand heat as evidenced by the warp in the middle of them. We are told to go away and to come back and to go away and to get back here by our Father and we shut the bedroom door and take turns putting on the goggles and making faces in the bathroom mirrors, faces with one side completely black, fried, bubbled, uneven, sunken in and shattered.

Courtesy of Everyday Genius.  Katie Jean Shinkle is the 2011 winner of the Calvino Prize, which is printed each year in the spring issue of Salt Hill.  Further excerpts of this work--The Show Must Go On--appear in Salt Hill 29.

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More work from Aaron $hunga--"Psycho Mansion."  Our cover artist for SH 29.

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Robot Love Diorama from H_NGM_N #11

by Caroline Cabrera

You’re a robot, but I keep trying to fill up your chest.

I hate an empty cage, the way all that space

just rattles around, the way there’s almost enough room

for a garden, a complex system—

that potato is heart-sized;

those roots are growing down just like I’d imagined.

You corrode.  You are made of such elements.

I oil your joints with Coca-Cola and you shine

so much I get mad and you get metal.

I laugh and you metal.

I love you, I say. 

But I don’t understand, you say.

You zoom around the apartment finishing all my chores.

You let me read my emails from the screen in your belly.

Sometimes you sleep in the storage closet

with my vacuum cleaner,

but you’re no good for cuddling, anyway.

You can make really beautiful sounds

and imitate almost every animal.;

If I pet your head, you coo like a peacock,

and I think this is pretty much like love, anyway.

We are the simplest machines.

You send me pictures of hydrangeas.

You send a message from our operator. 

It says I’m a robot too,

programmed not to know I’m a robot.

You encoded the message so I can’t read it.

I polish my face. We’re getting ready for a party.

Courtesy of H_NGM_AN, look for more work from Cabrera in Salt Hill 29 

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Thinking about Ulrich Haarburste's odes to Roy Orbison, here is Abraham Smith's (SH 29) wild reading of his poems for Hank Williams. 

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"Even though I know better than to trust appearances, especially posed, studio-airbrushed, heathered-backdrop appearances, still: the Gal-Chens had the look of a happy family. Maybe not particularly sophisticated, or good-looking, or fashionable, but still, happy. Even now I do not know if that was, or is, true or not. If they were, indeed, happy. But who can ever really know about anyone's happiness, even one's own? And if another woman can have the appearance of Rema, then perhaps I should by now be giving up on appearances entirely. But with that photo it was more than just an appearance, it was also a feeling, a family feeling. A feeling that at least seemed to be responding to something beyond mere appearance, though at times such "feelings"--such limbic system instinctual responses--are the most superficial and anachronistic of all, like the feeling a baby duck must have when it responds more strongly to a stick painted red than to the beak of its own mother."

-Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

Stay tuned for Danny Magariel's interview with Rivka Galchen from Salt Hill 29. 

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Faye Moorhouse's cat lady from SH 29.

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Notes on Writing, by Ulrich Haarburste (SH 29 Contributor)

Where do you like to start your stories? In scene, with dialogue?

Often I start them in the bath. Oh, I see. I think Sam Goldwyn said you should start with an explosion and build up to a climax. I like to start with a social dilemma and build to an apotheosis.

Does the character of Roy Orbison secretly already know he’s about to be wrapped in clingfilm before it even happens?

No, I do not think so, for the fact is that even I as the author am often surprised when it happens. I set out to explore a situation with strict impartiality, you know, as a scientist might run an experiment, only with characters rather than test-tubes, and I do not know where it will lead. When it leads to Roy Orbison being wrapped in clingfilm, of course, it is always a eureka moment.

What’s the key to a successful fan-fic story?

Truth, a pitiless searing honesty. No one must doubt that that is how Roy Orbison would behave if he was wrapped up in clingfilm or how David Hasselhoff would act if he was a mercenary werewolf or what The Supreme Dalek would say if he went to bed with Erik Estrada.

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