Deathselves

By Sarp Sozdinler

After my last round of chemo, I at last showed myself the courtesy of being my true self, of shirking my duties as a member of the society, of not being polite, of not showering for days on end if I felt like it, of not taking the trash out, of sending everyone straight to voicemail, of feeling the liberty to be rude to my friends and family, of being able to say no to them for once, of not responding to their calls or emails, or more importantly their inquiries about my life, about my romantic life, about my sexual life—if it still could be called that—or of avoiding people’s interest in my disappearance, my sudden withdrawal from their lives, my becoming a ghost without so much as giving them a reason, an excuse in which they could find comfort to not take things personal, to excise themselves from the responsibility of having done something wrong, something that might have soured what would be our already disjointed relationship, all at the expense of my becoming the person I’ve always desired, the kind of person who prioritizes herself, her needs, her wants, her desires over anything, starting with her body, in my case my ailing body, my once prom queen body, my now easily bruised body, the same body with which I once came sixty-ninth in the Paris marathon, the same body with which I drew the attention of everyone in every room I walked in, the same body with which I built my baby an unsound crib, the same body with which I got on the bus and left my mother’s home for a new life in the city, a place that would give me a lousy phone and a small apartment, a kid with chronic disease, a pocket to crawl into, a couch to sleep on, and a proclivity for being sorry all the time, for apologizing profusely for most anything, even when I was in the right, for the benefit of the men around me, along with my lovers, my terrible bosses, my dubious friends, all selfish in essence, not even bothering to pretend, to ask how I’ve been doing, if I’m in need, if I’m at peace, those who would take my being unavailable, unreachable, inaccessible for once in my life as a personal affront, those who should basically go fuck themselves, fuck their wives, fuck their parents, fuck the planet, fuck something, anything anything anything but me, me who should be left alone, burned like a witch, kissed like a lover, caressed like a wife, hugged like a mother, and forgotten like an ocean that had long become a terrain.

Based in Philadelphia and Amsterdam, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, Hobart, HAD, Trampset, and Maudlin House, among other journals.

Art by Michael Moreth, a recovering Chicagoan living in the rural, micropolitan City of Sterling, the Paris of Northwest Illinois USA.

In Translation

By William Zheng-Kang Hassett

In translation there is a choice: should an author elect to capture the object of translation, or rather aim to conjure that same feeling or image that that object’s reference evoked from its original form; in translation it is this choice that leads to two sets of failures in making the untranslatable—uncaptured or unconjured—for the ancient Greeks’ “sophrosyne;” some say temperance, some say moderation, but all say we cannot and do not know for sure, those who do know no longer live, and as such there can be no final hunt, no grand trap lain—uncaptured or unconjured—for the Portuguese “saudade;” melancholy, nostalgic, these are close; they evoke a similar feeling; but the gap lies in the fact that the word is said to be inherent to the people, an identity—uncaptured or unconjured or however—through study of Plato, Aristotle, Homer, the olden, it is said that some have been able to see this “sophrosyne,” via an embedding in the texts, and begin to grasp and ultimately capture meaning, and in learning Portuguese and living and conversing, it is said that some have had that “saudade” bloom within, unwittingly or otherwise, so we find that in search of the untranslatable, in an airless chase or a desperate dying expression, some lucky few find themselves translated, unable to return to that object they were previously; or, lost in translation.

Art by Anika Chatterjee.

Edison's Oyster

By John Waddy Bullion

Thomas Edison was not fond of allowing his work to cross over into his domestic life, except for the time he beckoned his second wife, Mina, to come sit beside him at his workbench, where he helped her hook electrodes up to an oyster and deliver low-voltage shocks into the creature until its shell opened, disgorging a gleaming, white, opaque pearl the same size and circumference of the ball bearings the perennially sleep-deprived Edison was fond of cupping in his hands whenever he felt himself succumbing to exhaustion, so that he could instead drift into the twilight state of consciousness where he believed genius and inspiration were the most accessible, the same ball bearings that would would drop from his palms as he teetered on the precipice of deep, dumbfounded sleep, clatter noisily to the floor, and shock him awake.

John Waddy Bullion’s writing has appeared in BULL, HAD, X-R-A-Y, the Texas Review, Hunger Mountain, and Vol 1. Brooklyn, among other fine places, and his debut collection of short stories, This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press in November 2025.

Art by Lisa McLemore, an artist, poet, and photographer living in Washington DC.