Issue 14: August 2021

Dear Reader,

As the dog days of summer 2021 draw to a close, we journey out and in amid the vagaries of this pandemic. What does it mean to survive, to feel safe? Who can we trust for the truth? And how do we escape when it all becomes too much?

If Covid limited the freedom to move beyond our familiar nooks, or cagibis, it has elicited far-reaching forays among writers—in this issue, an odyssey of young manhood through Greece via backwoods Virginia, an Amtrak trip showing everything and nothing about America, refracted memories of a beachside playscape like no other, an equally untraditional seaside mystery of love and visual art, and a dystopian tale of adventurous survival that’s smack-bang of the moment.

In very different stories of escape, a woman weathers her daughter’s imprisonment in the dubious safety of the girl’s childhood bedroom, and another heals PTSD with horror films: “Survivor stories are cathartic,” she explains. A translator’s atypical journey in her field comprises this issue’s “On Writing” feature, while “Pablo’s Story” charts poverty, global inequality, and what gets lost in translation as a German travels through Mexico. As it tends to do, our poetry section runs the emotional gamut: poems of grief, fear, wonder, punishment, and the “so what” of it all.

These fine selections are Cagibi’s contribution to the fall resurgence of the arts as we move toward a new beginning. We hope you enjoy Issue 14 as much as we did honing it as guest editors. Next up is Cagibi 2021: The Print Issue, due out in early December. Till then, godspeed!

Amy Dupcak and Carrie Schneider

Issue 14

August 2021

Stories

People of the Plains - by Gavin Boyter
Refractions - by James Dean Jay Byrd
In Translation: Pablo’s Story - by Paula Köhlmeier, trans. Maria Fink
Forgery - by Peter Wallace
The Safe Room - by Robert Earle

Essays

The Empire Builder - by Emily May
Healing Through Horror - by K. Bell
The Greek Coat - by Neal Snidow

On Writing

A Translation Journey - by Patricia Dubrava

Poems

Sodium - by Chris Watson
Complex System - by E. R. Lutken
Outside, the Howling - by Eric Loya
Two Years Later - by George Franklin
So What - by Michel Steven Krug
To My Daughter Katie - by Scudder Parker
Three Poems by Shawna Ervin - Discipline // I Can Say Church If You Ask Me // Elementary School