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
Issue Cover
Photograph by Olga Breydo.
ISSN 2643-3273. Copyright © Cagibi Literary LLC.
Issue 14.1
Features from Cagibi Express
- Meditation on Death: Postcard from Capitol Reef National Park, Utah (Monday, October 11, 2021) - by Amie Adams
- Autumn Inferno (Wednesday, October 6, 2021) - by Nicole R. Zimmerman
- Yam Cakes in the Rain (Monday, October 4, 2021) - by Mark Crimmins
- The United Saguaros: Postcard from Sasabe, Arizona (Thursday, September 30, 2021) - by Sarp Sozdinler
Next Issue
CAGIBI publishes four digital issues a year. Submissions are open, and editors are reading.