Category: Side A

“Distance and Memory,” a Side A Essay by Jason Zuzga

My grandmom Victoria (Tomaro) Stracquadanio born in Boiano, Italy, immigrant to Bound Brook, New Jersey, subsequently married John of Modica, Sicily. At the age of 21, I visited both towns. She, widowed, is suffering, at 99-years old, from vascular dementia at a nursing home near my mom’s home. My grandmom is now under the protocols…
Side A: “Taxonomy of Amnesia,” a poem by Tam Nguyen

Taxonomy of Amnesia I swear I’d trade my body to remember and instantly regret it. Ma and Ba—children of sweat-glazed faces, too-short ribs. Their spines the bridges connecting no worlds. Am I your son at all?The answer a teethmark left on a just-ripened bomb. Anywhere on earth my body will be hijacked by explosions, even…
Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

Fragments in Color 1 When a kid I kept running away from home to see if Mama still wanted me. Never far and always to the corrugated camp near Sunset. I drank chicory with Maggie and chalked pink flamingos on the concrete. Tall yellow legs, long feathers with curved necks turned right. Beaks dark as…
“I want a new car, I told you.” a Side A prose poem by Hannah Grieco

I want a new car, I told you. but what I want is to smash the windows of our minivan, to take the chainsaw out of the shed, to push the ignition and hear it sputter and forget for a moment how to run before coming to life, to feel it growl in my hands,…
Side A Poem: “Indigo Froth” by Benjamin Niespodziany

Indigo Frothfor Boris Vian It’s an old robe story. Old folktale. Woman surrounds herself with flowers and dies. Petals wilt. Plates squirm. Mounds gather a mattress of warmth. Acorns made for testing. When she dies, her blood is paper. Here’s some money back, the director replies. The sky is cardboard. Like in the flickers. He…
Side A Video Poem: Catherine Heard & Gary Barwin’s THE MOST CHARMING CREATURES

Music was created by Barwin using Max/MSP programming language abstracting the recording of the spoken text into a haunting soundworld of ambiguous time, measured by the subterranean sound of a beating heart. Mini-interview with Catherine Heard & Gary Barwin HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as collaborators (or continues to)? GB:…
Side A Poem: “A Power or Ability of the Kind Possessed by Superheroes” by Kathleen Rooney

A Power or Ability of the Kind Possessed by Superheroes If death is a specter that devours everything, then making friends with death would be a good superpower. What if you had a superpower but it was really banal, like the ability to beat anybody in the world at checkers? My meditation teacher, June, probably…
Side A Short Story: “Dolphin Adventure” by Robert Long Foreman

Stan arrived home late and flopped like an upright dolphin into his and Linda’s house. Dolphins are almost never upright. When they are it doesn’t last. They don’t have feet. They barely have skeletons. So when they try to go upright they hit the beach with a wet slap. They swim upward all the time.…
Side A Poem: “My Breakdown Is Like Buster Keaton Trying to Smile” by Jessie Janeshek

My Breakdown Is Like Buster Keaton Trying to Smile I keep looking through binocularsover and out toward the rivercalories are negotiablebut in every rendition I have a black eye. It’s all about pratfallsmy globe-sized stomachgarroted or garrulousand/or love before breakfast. Oct/Nov adjust the knobit always rains in my dreamseven the one where I’m swallowed into…