Issue 9: January 2020

9. Welcome to the ninth issue of CAGIBI’s online literary journal.

For this anniversary issue (year 3, here we come!) we are pleased to announce this year’s Macaron Prize with 2020 guest judges Andre Dubus III in fiction, Emily Flake in cartoon, Jill Bialosky in nonfiction, and Nick Flynn in poetry. A dynamite print issue will arrive this fall with prizewinners and finalists. Also the issue will have our second Omnibus! Anthology, of works published in 2019 quarterly online issues, curated this year by guest editor Michael Reynolds, Editor in Chief of Europa Editions. The issue can be pre-ordered now.

2020, new year, new decade, new horizon: in Cagibi Express, the ongoing section of our journal where we publish book excerpts and interviews as well as Postcards (short nonfiction centered around a place) we now have a new series called “OTG: On the Ground.” The series offers a space for essays and personal narratives that tackle current events or issues, whether cultural, social or political, here in the US and abroad. “We’re on the ground in Tijuana. OTG, as I’ll soon learn to say. Which is a shorthand for being a witness and working for change.” Inspiring words by contributor Karen Laws in what became the inaugural essay of the series, on her experience as a volunteer helping migrants at the US-Mexican border. Indeed, as writers and artists, there is this tension, always lurking behind the creative impulse, between observing and engaging with the world, no matter how far from everyday life or from reality this impulse takes us. In the photograph we chose for this issue’s cover, we can oversee, from the top of the Griffith Observatory, the cityscape of Los Angeles as a pale, distant reality. On the ground, wherever we stand, we can change the reality we live in—but only if we engage, as writers, as readers, and as citizens.

Let’s make 2020 the year of engagement.

The Editors.

Issue 9

January 2020

Stories

That Which Is Yours - by Annell López
What They Lost at the Fair - by Briana Maley
Every Marine Is A Rifleman - by Chris Stuck
Wild Girls - by Laura Perkins
Aspirational - by Mathina Calliope
Wish You Were Here - by Patrick McNeil

Essays

Apricot - by Benjamine Mo
In Translation: María Negroni’s Notes for a Short Biography - by María Negroni, trans. Allison A. deFreese
Home of the Chatterbox - by Mark Lewandowski
In Translation: Clean // Vask - by Suzanne Brøgger, trans. Michael Favala Goldman

Interview

Speaking Russian with a New Zealand Accent: Gala Uzryutova interviews David Howard - Gala Uzryutova, a Russian poet and prose writer, interviews David Howard, a New Zealand poet and editor.

Poems

The Homewrecker’s IKEA Bed - by Alaina Bainbridge
Two Poems by Alina Stefanescu - Beggared // In Case Sanda Ungureanu Comes Over
I Grew Up Watching Anime - by Ayesha Raees
The Book We Stop On - by Barry Peters
Män som hatar kvinnor - by Cait Powell
heat - by Carol Lynne Knight
In Translation: Affectionate Archaeology // Arqueología amorosa - by Cristina Peri Rossi, trans. Elizabeth Rose
Two Poems by Erin Carlyle - Must Leave Something // Momma as Death and Gate Keeper
To the mean boy I thought I loved - by Jen Kindbom
Anthropocene - by Kathy Goodkin
In Translation: I Want An Electric Juicer // אני רוצה מסחטה חשמלית - by Maya Tevet Dayan, trans. Jane Medved
how to become ruler of the ladybirds - by Paula Harris
On Thanksgiving I Press Turkey Patties Into My George Foreman Grill - by Peter H. Michaels

Issue Cover

“Observing Los Angeles.” Photograph by Olga Breydo.

Issue 9.1

Features from Cagibi Express

Kimiko Hahn // The Cagibi Express Interview + Poem (Monday, April 13, 2020) - Cagibi interviews Kimiko Hahn, whose new collection of poetry is Foreign Bodies
From the Archives of the Cagibi Express Interview (Tuesday, March 31, 2020) - Since “sheltering in place” has become a necessity, and many of us find ourselves confined to the cagibi […]
Still Life with Meredith (book excerpt) (Wednesday, March 25, 2020) - by Ann Lewinson
Reading Deb Olin Unferth: Humanizing the Hen (Wednesday, March 18, 2020) - by LaVonne Elaine Roberts
Postcard From the Halifax Pier (Tuesday, March 10, 2020) - by Sara Carroll
godspine (book excerpt) (Monday, March 9, 2020) - by Terri Muuss
Jill Bialosky // The Cagibi Express Interview (Tuesday, February 25, 2020) - Cagibi interviews Jill Bialosky, whose new collection of poetry, Asylum, is forthcoming August 2020
Book Passage: Kathleen Donohoe // The Night on Inis Mór (Tuesday, February 11, 2020) - by Kathleen Donohoe
Are there Copper Pipes in Heaven // Eru Koparrør Í Himmiríki (book excerpt) (Tuesday, February 4, 2020) - by Katrin Ottarsdóttir, trans. Matthew Landrum