This month we bring you three poems selected from Bottom Feeders by ARIELLE HEBERT, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press.
TOC:
—“Elegy for Florida”
—“Red Tide”
—“The Dead Layer”
Elegy for Florida
Almost everything they said about her was true.
Even the bad things.
Especially the bad things.
She began reaching for the water
and never stopped reaching
until she became
an extension of water itself,
her delicate arm just begging
to be snapped off from the panhandle.
By EMMELIE PROPHÈTE
Translated from French by AIDAN ROONEY
Uncle Frédo lies in the dark, water dripping through the sheet-metal roof. His American Dream crushed by the reality of existence as a non-white, non-citizen in the U.S., he returns to Haiti for the remainder of his life. He rarely speaks and is nearly always drunk. He spends his days in a dreamless twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness.
Cécé, his 20 year old niece and the inheritor of his psychic burden, is our real protagonist.
Cécé was born into a slum outside Port-au-Prince, a place fractured by violence. It is the recent past, in the heady early days of the digital age. Facebook was still the social platform of choice and capitalism had not yet made an industry of influencer marketing. Abandoned by a kleptocratic state, the Cité of Divine Power and its counterpart, Bethlehem, have seen gangs step in to provide structure for residents by claiming a monopoly on violence. Unlike the Hobbesian Leviathan, there is no law underwriting the circumstances under which violence can be applied. It is a lawless place—but not without an order of its own.
Huntsville, Alabama
The news came on a Tuesday: U.S. Space Command was moving to Huntsville. The headlines said Redstone Arsenal wins the bid, but that word wins sat strange in my mouth. In the breakroom, someone printed the article and pinned it to the bulletin board above the coffee pot. The photo showed the gates of Redstone shining in the morning sun, a soldier standing guard beside the sign.
Outside my office window, trucks rumbled past loaded with pallets of equipment. The air always smelled faintly of dust and jet fuel. I thought about how this patch of land in northern Alabama, once a cotton field, then a proving ground, then a missile test site, was about to become home to something even bigger.
Curated by KEI LIM
With our spring issue hot off the press, check out these recommendations from three of the issue’s contributors: LIZ DEWOLF, ANDREW STEINER, and MARIA TERRONE.
Zach Williams’ Beautiful Days, recommended by Issue 31 contributor Liz DeWolf
I first came across Zach Williams’ work when I read his 2022 story “Wood Sorrel House” in The New Yorker. The story, in which a family arrives at a rental cabin and then forgets everything about their lives before, including how they got there, deeply unsettled me. Something about Williams’ careful, straightforward prose makes each disturbing revelation—The baby doesn’t age while the parents do! Food mysteriously appears in the freezer!—all the more destabilizing.
By JULIANA LEITE
Translated by ZOË PERRY
Reviewed by JAY BOSS RUBIN
In the opening chapter of this subtle epic, the centenarian narrator Natalia confides: “At this point in life, I’d say that going on forever or for too long is a bad decision, a very bad one; what’s nice is to exist and then stop existing, to exist for a while and then be able to change the subject.” In other words, if the transition between life and death is an abrupt one, then so be it. “[L]et’s be done with it,” she says, “though it would be nice to have the time to spritz on some perfume beforehand.”
When I first encountered this sentiment in Juliana Leite’s Exemplary Humans, translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry, I took it be a bit of a bluff. It reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw a couple of years ago in Portland, Oregon, that read: “I ♥ AGING & DYING” (which I interpreted as an existentialist rejoinder to proclamations of commercial allegiance—“I ♥ Mr Plywood” and so on—so common in my hometown). But by the end of Leite’s novel, which takes place primarily in Rio de Janeiro and Petrópolis, Brazil, and spans that country’s lengthy dictatorship, I was convinced that Natalia’s breezy acceptance of her own mortality was absolutely serious. It is not only possible, but strongly advised to love aging and dying. It isn’t easy, though. To transcend dread, and transform it into something more palatable, a unique kind of emotional intelligence is required, and so is a talent for adjusting one’s perspectives. Natalia is the novel’s exemplar of both these qualities.
Curated by KEI LIM
This month, JULIET MCSHANNON, RO SKELTON, and TERESE SVOBODA review books that center personal and political hardships. They carefully consider the responsibility and care of writing about real people, the act of research in representation, and how writing can function as an agent of change.
DAVID EMEKA and CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH first connected in 2020, after Emeka read Ibeh’s Gerald Kraak-shortlisted story, The Ache of Longing. Emeka had raved about it to a mutual friend, who encouraged him to send Ibeh a DM. He did, and they continued messaging on Twitter about shared goals and interests. Later, Emeka was accepted into the Washington University MFA program in St. Louis, where Chukwuebuka was enrolled. Ibeh didn’t know then, but Emeka applied to the program with a story Ibeh had provided feedback on. They’ve continued to share work since, and enjoyed many adventures as well.
For this interview, Emeka and Ibeh spoke over two days when Ibeh visited St. Louis for Christmas. Their initial conversation unfolded in Ibeh’s wonderfully warm apartment, and they continued connecting over email after Ibeh’s return to Lewisburg, PA, where he currently teaches.
David Emeka (left) and Chukwuebuka Ibeh (right)
Chukwuebuka Ibeh (CI): Congratulations on your Outpost residency! How did you feel coming out of it? What was your routine like?
David Emeka (DE): Thank you so much, Ebuka. Vermont was wonderful, and the Outpost residency even more so. I keep thinking about the meals, the warmth I felt from everyone there. The grounds—the trees, the cornfields, the mountains in the distance—were spectacular. I do some of my best thinking when walking, so I’d swaddle myself in a blanket and pace among the trees, just meditating. And then there was this hammock—that was my favorite spot. When my ideas had collected to supersaturation, I’d go into the hammock and cover myself with the blanket and write. I’m a morning person, but I love to write in the dark. Every day I woke up at dawn to write, had breakfast, paced and wrote and read, jogged around the neighborhood, then returned for dinner. Sometimes we cooked for each other—I would make sourdough bread, or D’mani Thomas, the other fellow, would make tacos. We took walks under the stunning sunsets. It was a splendid time.
CI: It truly sounds beautiful. How did this process translate when you returned home?
By THOMAS EMPL
Translated by ISABEL FARGO COLE
The ferryman wrenched the gangplank out of its mount, heaved a breath and hooked it between the boat and the dock. During the brief ride we didn’t say a word; he didn’t recognize us. On the coast, to the east of the town, a military jet took off and dipped straight into a breakneck loop to head the other way, trailing its sonic boom.
I’d shaved the night before. Mouth open, I fingered my smooth skin. Rough lines ran from my nostrils to the corners of my mouth, like incisions. My ears looked huge. When I got up in the morning, my mirror image startled me. It was as if someone had hung up one of those photos I never looked at, showing that out-of-place apprentice, expressionless at the joiner’s bench. I didn’t recognize myself until I heard my voice.
This poem is republished from Water & Salt by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
Do not name your daughters Shaymaa,
courage will march them
into the bullet path of dictators.
Do not name them Sundus,
the garden of paradise calls out to its marigolds,
gathers its green leaves up in its embrace.
Do not name your children Malak or Raneem,
angels want the companionship of others like them,
their silvery wings trailing the filth of jail cells,
the trill of their laughter a call to prayer.
These poems are republished from suddenly we by Evie Shockley, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
perched
i am black, comely,
a girl on the cusp of desire.
my dangling toes take the rest
the rest of my body refuses. spine upright,
my pose proposes anticipation. i poise
in copper-colored tension, intent on
manifesting my soul in the discouraging world.
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