Gulf Coast Online Exclusives


Bra Fitting

Kasey Payette

It’s not the contraption itself that I love—this pair of shells of steel and lace—but the woman who measures me and tests my straps as if armoring me for battle.


from Waiting for Perec

Mario Meléndez, trans. by Eloisa Amezcua and John Allen Taylor

It was night / Death slept naked / on God’s corpse

Father and Son

Flavia Company, transl. by Kate Whittemore

The man was his father. How could he be so disgusted by him? His mother, long dead, always told him: your father will outlive us all, but not before he makes us suffer as much as he wants to, and more.

The Machine is Trying to Make You Lose

Liam Baranauskas

Pinball takes place in a more liminal environment: those may be your physical fingers hitting flipper buttons and your real voice cussing out Bride of Pin-Bot, but your vision, your concentration—everything about you that’s more consciousness than body—moves outside of yourself and behind a thin layer of glass.

The Traveling Coconut

Tashima Thomas

The spindly stalks creep out from the nexus of the composition like arachnid extremities. The pronounced compression of space pushes the roughly hewn roots into the forefront for the beholder’s contemplation. The sharp points and scraggly edges of the root system prevent easy entrance into the scene. Oller creates a kind of coconut Noli me tangere: we may look, but not touch.


From the Archives

EXPLICATION OF THE POET’S BREASTS

Kelly Weber

I can’t write about breasts without thinking of damselflies stinging the surface of water.

Ultrazone

Joseph Han

Listen up! We’ve been getting our asses handed to us out there, and there’s no end in sight. I’m the best shot we’ve had at taking opposing bases down and reclaiming the map—until you showed up. Maybe we’ll stand a fighting chance. But that’s up to you and how well you handle that phaser.

Fire Blanket

Clara Chow

I’m writing a book about fires. Metaphorical and literal. About the way human relationships spontaneously combust. How a self crashes and burns.

Against Blinders

Jonathan Moody

I see Justice in the form of Dr. Attisha; through her horn-rimmed glasses, I see the blood lead levels doubling inside of toddlers.


From the Blog

Losing the Plot: On Lauren Berlant's Desire/Love

In their entry on love, Berlant writes that we tend to (mistakenly) use the objects our desire attaches to in order to assume an identity— “you know who…

Feeling Political

For Berlant, part of the problem of politics is that marginalized people have to accommodate the feelings of their majority counterparts in order to successfully…