Author: Travis Shosa
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Rhythm and Somatic Consciousness: On Eva Alter’s Autocartographies
Eva Alter | Autocartographies | Eulogy Press | October 2025 | 31 pages In the seventh stanza of “Balancing Rock,” a hiking narrative featuring an autobiographical speaker, poet Eva Alter describes a resurging unity of mind and flesh: “I could / think again [ ] rhythmed temperate terrain / brought me back to my body” (24). By…
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Poem For Cletus Crow
I can hearseagullsfuckingon the roof they goho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho hothen there isthe sound ofwings flappingthen they goho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho hoagain Oliver Land’s work has been published in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Expat Press, Spectra Poets, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, White Light Fades (Plague…
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Ecstasy, Suite
—after Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy I. “She haunts her milk-white skin with her hands” This morning is like any other— sun through high windows, slowrise toward breakfast and dressing. But today is the day her lifebegins. By afternoon, she’ll be dressed…
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Currie Park, West Palm Beach, 2025
The Breakers’ towers nubbin the horizon,blue in morning’s refraction across the Intracoastal. Rocks on this near shore catch the pink light,sloping into the green waterlike songs fading with a generation. Ibises flocking here on the water-pooled concretestalk and prod vividly before crossing Flagler. A man sits on the passenger seat of his old car,the door…
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On Reading Fredric Jameson’s Lectures on Lacan
I am becoming more expertIn looking at another’s faceRight up until the very last instantBefore they look back at me—Their sides, profiles, turning hingesOf the spine’s bones pivoting,And I shamelessly steal awayBefore they catch me. It’s a harassment only I knowI have done, until a boyfriend orCompanion of the looked-atApprehends me in the future. “I…
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The Smell of Plastic.
In the old Ben Franklin store,(it’s a precursor to Roses, itself a precursor to Wal-Mart)Sits a lone mint Destro action figure.His shiny head, reflecting the halogen tube light above.My memories of that time are mostly gone,Aged out of existence with daily dread,But I can recall,The smell of decaying plastic,When I ripped into his package,Freeing him…
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Song Spotlight: My New Band Believe’s “Love Story”
“Love Story” – the first single from My New Band Believe’s self-title debut album – is a clear signifier of the split between Cameron Picton and fellow black midi alum Geordie Greep. Following black midi’s sudden disbandment in 2023, Greep would follow Hellfire with The New Sound the following year, and while it certainly differentiated…
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Wicked Grit Lit: On Donovan Whitley’s Wickedness and Folly
Donovan Whitley | Wickedness and Folly | Leftover Books | March 2026 | 130 pages Donovan’s Whitley’s debut short story collection is hilarious dark comedy about degenerates and the horrible choices they make—and the terrible consequences. There’s no heroes coming forward in Whitley’s cast of sad sacks and his stories have taken on an extra…
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Dominic Henry Peterson high school Arizona
The sun shone through the bus window, beating down atop his head. He imagined his curls withering from the heat and falling to the floor, like dead leaves from a plant, mingling with the dust and wrappers and wads of gum. He felt the pinprick of eyes on the side of his neck and turned.…
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A quick update on Herman Circus
Two weeks ago they set up a circus in our town, pitching a sky blue bigtop with spindly flaps and banners with clowns, little people, and an insane flying elephant. The elephant is loving life, propelling himself forward through the air with a massive thrust of his sailing ears, carrying a parcel of triumphant zoo…