The Quiet American

Mathias Svalina

One picks through the trash for flattened cans & bits of copper wire. Water drips from the malarial eyes of computer screens onto the discarded plastics below. There is always white smoke of flaming plastic. Always one’s brothers & sisters twisting new contortions to reach below the heaps of trash. Mothers & fathers merge into a bit of black garbage bag flapping in the wind. Language fades in the sun. One thinks one is above this, but there is nothing above this. The world is a trash heap, the occupants searching through the smoke & carcasses.

Mathias Svalina is the author of one book of prose, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur (Mud Luscious, 2011), & two books of poetry, Destruction Myth (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009) & The Explosions (Subito, 2012). With Alisa Heinzman & Zachary Schomburg, he co-edits Octopus Books.

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In This Issue

Kurt Beals
translating Anja Utler
...Carried Out
Jen Zoble
translating Melina Kamerić
...Adrenaline Memory
Sandra Kolankiewicz
...Desoto and the Pigs
Karen Carcia
...Box
...Stereopsis
...Sunday School
...The Arc of the Story
...Two
Harold Abramowitz
...from Blind Spot
Joshua Daniel Edwin
...Grüβ vom Krampus
...In the Garden of Earthly Delights
...During my Reign
Russell Valentino
...Pierre Menard's Alexander Blok
Elizabeth Catanese
...How We Stayed Together: A Graphic Flash
Nalini Abhiraman
...from Junk Movements
James D'Agostino
...Sign
...To Code Means We Have to Cut Skylights
...If We Lived Our Lives Like Songs
Brandon Holmquest
translating Gastón Fernández
...Apparent Story i
Ricardo Maldonado
...The Money Shot
...For Love
...Love-Seat by Arrest
...Layaway
...Heterosexuality as Custom
Eric Parker
...A Quick Lesson in Grammar
Cait Weiss
...This Is The Story
...The Whole Ending
Kate Click
...Bleach
Elizabeth Mayer
...To Carter
Mathias Svalina
...One Makes of Noise a Ladder
...The Body
...The Caretaker
...The Cave
...The Quiet American
Mike Edrington
...After Life