Issue Thirteen Fall 2023
Welcome to Issue Thirteen. In this issue, you’ll find bone broth, neon piss, drowsy peonies, tiny figurines of Buddha, and Carlton cigarettes (bonus points if you find the black-haired Welshman). From a lushly cinematic account of a desolate city to translated poems in the voice of a medieval trobairitz, the offerings here are sure to provoke and inspire the imagination.
While we may still be the new kid on the block when it comes to literary magazines, we’re pleased to be gradually gathering our fair share of accolades. Last year, we were the recipients of a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, an award that recognizes US-based magazines for publishing extraordinary writing and advancing the literary community. In tandem with the matching grant conferred by the prize in the second year, we’re excited to be fundraising for the first time. All of this is quite new to us, so we hope you’ll come along for the ride and share in our goal to ensure the magazine’s future for years to come.
If you’re holding Issue Thirteen in your hands—whether you ordered it online, found it in a store, or pilfered it from your roommate’s bookshelf—it means you in some way value the art of print. As always, the best way you can support us is to subscribe and spread the word. Thank you for reading us, and for being part of the American Chordata family.
Hannah Hirsh
September 2023
Fiction
End Of Babes
Everyone loves your nigga. This used to make you happy, proud, even, but then it got worse and eventually became a huge-ass problem. It was …
I Went Into a Wand
I would see her eating in restaurants alone. I was attracted to this quality—she never looked bored or lonely, eating alone in restaurants. I once …
The Wellspring of All My Suffering
It was rumors, at first. Maybe rumors is the wrong word—an urban legend. Or a myth, a terrifying myth. Someone was going around and turning …
Terminal Radiance
An excerpt from Radiant Cities Just before sunset, Bernard will take his usual route. He will pull the dog along the pathways as she sniffs …
Poetry
Affections
In a cloud of Love’s Baby Soft, with bowls of mint / ice cream her father brought us on her daybed of ‘80s roses / before he bounded to the basement to paint skulls and barbs on helmets, / we had our fun …
Overland
It isn’t useful to celebrate being alive. / But I’d like to be generous. Of the hand / that feeds, look to the carpals, / a mechanism that takes until it spoils. / Of the fruit, I bite into its resource, / the orchard harvester’s bee stings. I bite …
Straws for Bricks
I daydream, I drink coffee. I wonder what turns the locks: money, or feelings, which like bills litter my soft bed? Making art should be …
Capitalist Coping Mechanisms for Communist Guilt
I’m really glad I remembered
that time passes, Jamie says
as we walk around Green-Wood Cemetery
in the snow.Chef
Not everyone goes on. Electric eel played outside
the window. I ate perogies: boiled, tucked with potatoes.
I poured vodka and did not drink,Lonely women make good lovers,
sings the man on the country station, but that’s not how I remember loneliness: mostly too drunk to feel anyone’s pleasure, and the next morning …
Two Poems
Seasons probably everything is going to be eventually terriblebut right now the prose of a forklift reversing into a garageconsumes me and it is very …
Locating the Wound
The occasion occurs like all dreadful things: erratically, zippy-paced.An electric shock, a hornet sting, a nail’s peck upon the sole.Briefly and at random, plainness halts …
Someone Famous
I once dated a man who wanted to be famous and loved only that which might give it to him. I sat inside my unfamous …
Three Poems
A Little Garden Room, or Assisted Living And will I arrive tomorrow also?Here today doesn’t count. The project is at 1 o’clock.The project is a …
Van Gogh
I must reimagine my life, as I imagine wheat fieldsendure their controlled burn to make roomfor the spring, and my hand blots houses in rowshouses …
Nonfiction
On Menma
E.A.K. in the West Village has been my favorite ramen spot for several years. I first discovered it on a gray, restless afternoon, while on …