Cagibi Literary Journal Issue 5

5! Welcome to the fifth issue of CAGIBI’s literary journal. For this anniversary issue, we decided to start a new year with a bang! so we announced the Macaron Prize with judges Chantel Acevedo, Major Jackson, and Sheila Kohler. We have burst onto the scene of writing contests! And more: a dynamite print issue arrives this spring with prizewinners and finalists. Also the issue will have our inaugural Omnibus! Anthology, edited by Jonathan Galassi, of works published in 2018 quarterly online issues. Issue the fireworks!

For this issue’s cover, we chose Stéphane Cocke’s photograph in the spirit of budding flowers. A mysterious beauty is yet to unfold. What flowers will emerge, as beautiful and celebratory as a night sky of fireworks, as you browse this issue?

Opposites attract, they say—fireworks! Small explosions, illuminating unexpectedly, sometimes big and bright. At Cagibi we deeply appreciate the fireworks that can happen when opposites come together. As reasoning creatures, all of us need discourse and inquiries to grow an understanding of how the world around us works. It’s not easy to take a stand, as we often must do, and also to work together toward compromise, as we often must do, for new ideas to take shape. These wanderings in discourse and inquiry are an adventure; the same instinct that draws us to foreign places, like the tug you’ll feel reading the interview with translator Megan McDowell, a powerful and moving conversation—it will have you leaping to read new books in translation. New discoveries! Then apply the salve of explosive laughter with the works of New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake. And then turn to George Franklin’s featured essay on what leads him into prisons to teach poetry. What courage all this requires! Read on, have courage.

The Editors.

Issue 5

January 2019

Features

Ac·Cent·Tchu·Ate the Intertextuality: Interview! with Translator (Megan McDowell) - Cagibi interviews Megan McDowell, translator of many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain
Signaling the Gods: Cartoons by Emily Flake - By Emily Flake
Acquainted with the Night: On Teaching in Florida State Prisons - by George Franklin

Stories

Animal Shelters - by Aimee LaBrie
I Hate You More Than I Love You - by Beatriz L. Seelaender
In Translation: My Button Eyes // چشم‌های دکمه‌ای من - by Bizhan Najdi, trans. Michelle Quay
Paradise, Undusted - by Elena Georgiou
The Procedure - by Elizabeth DelConte
Nests - by Eugene Lim
The Helicopter - by Justin Allen
Days of Ash and Smoke - By Lee Matthew Goldberg
The Tapes - by Leigh Clouse
Damascening - by Patrick Butler

Essays

Along the Escarpment - by Benjamin Erlandson
When Mourning Becomes Family Story - by Edith Cook
Looking for Love in All the Wronged Places - by Joshua G. Adair
The Empty Lot and Bernard of Clairvaux - by Joyce Myerson
Cradle - by Michael Klein

Poems

Three Poems by Amy Newman - Gravity // You Should Put a Donkey in Your Poem // Thirst
Bangkok’s Rainy Season - by Ana Pugatch
Eternity - by Christopher Watson
False Spring - by David Capps
In Translation: Poems by Djelal Kuznetsov, trans. Boris Kokotov - Bouquet of lilacs // Букет сирени | Beethoven, Ode to joy // Бетховен, "Ода к радости"
My Father Was A Vegetable - by James Swansbrough
Dismantling Stigma – A Miscellany of Mind Diaries and DSM Poems - by Janet Duffy
Three Poems by Jen Stewart Fueston - Bodies of Water // Heat Lightning // Cardiology
Three Poems by Maggie Smith - Captcha // Whetting // On the bright side
Elegy for Now - by Michael Poage
Two Poems by Mickey “The Flying Busman” Mahan - Walking Through the Bus Garage // Blue Work Shirts
New Year’s Morning - by Micki Blenkush
Five Poems by Nick Flynn - Confessional // Horse Thief // Now // Haecceity // As I Lay Dying
Point Gardening - by Peter H. Michaels
The Accidental Destroyer - by Will Reger
In Translation: Three Poems by Ximena Gómez - Felicidad con mosca // Happiness with Fly | Dorado // Dorado | Tríada edípica // Oedipal Triad

Issue Cover

“Raw beauty, botox free” photograph by Stéphane Cocke.

Issue 5.1

Features from Cagibi Express

James Lasdun // The Cagibi Express Interview (Thursday, March 28, 2019) - Cagibi interviews James Lasdun, whose latest novel is Afternoon of a Faun
Both at Once: Postcard from the Mont Blanc Tunnel (Tuesday, March 26, 2019) - by Anna Foran
The Shaman of Turtle Valley (book excerpt) (Tuesday, March 19, 2019) - by Clifford Garstang, from his novel The Shaman of Turtle Valley
Place as Palimpsest: A Postcard from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (Tuesday, March 12, 2019) - by Jhanvi Ramaiya
Book Passage: Jordan A. Rothacker (Saturday, March 9, 2019) - by Jordan A. Rothacker
Book Passage: Brendan Lorber (Tuesday, March 5, 2019) - by Brendan Lorber
Bessie’s Resurrection (book excerpt) (Tuesday, February 26, 2019) - by Kimberly Collins, from her book of poems, Bessie's Resurrection
Major Jackson // The Cagibi Express Interview + Poem (Wednesday, February 13, 2019) - Cagibi interviews Major Jackson, the poetry judge for the Macaron Prize 2019. His latest book is Roll Deep.
The Desert Whispers: Postcard from Joshua Tree (Tuesday, February 5, 2019) - by Geoff Watkinson
The Matryoshka: Postcard from Portugal (Tuesday, January 29, 2019) - by Anita Lekic
Chantel Acevedo // The Cagibi Express Interview (Friday, January 25, 2019) - Cagibi interviews Chantel Acevedo, the fiction judge for the Macaron Prize 2019. Her latest book is The Living Infinite.

Prefer to Dive In at Random?

A cagibi is a place where things are often gathered pell-mell, which comes from the French word pêle-mêle, a state of affairs characterized by the random mixing of things, a chaotic state of affairs that also opens the door to unexpected discovery. In that spirit, while this page lists the contents alphabetically by the contributor’s first name, here also is a separate list in random order, to encourage you to skip around the contents of Cagibi Issue 5, to discover a work of prose or poetry you’d like to sink down into. We expect it will stay with you, and we hope you’ll be inspired to share it. Dive in!