What is our responsibility as artists to reinvent or reimagine our world, our selves, our work in order to dismantle current systems and conventions and tastes that are at best, dated and stifling, and at worst a threat to real, lived lives? What role does re-imagination play in freedom?
Sometimes the name and the body stop serving one another. It has been ineffective to always have to explain what this journal wasn’t (about JF, for instance) before we could say what we were. It is far too easy to distract oneself with the symptom instead of the problems rooted in the system at play.
Dear James, I wrote this all in cat memes cuz I didn’t want anything to get missed.
frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own you deserve time before the proverbial train hits and the album drops you both prepare for the reactions molecular and digital: “where this nigga at” he lived full and died empty. and ain’t that what they say about you, frank? you in hiding … Continue reading
For issue 8, each editor selected their pieces based off of particular, meaningful themes. We’ve decided to publish these works as a folio in their specific genre so readers can feel how they interact and create a dialogue with each other. Get ready to read dangerously. Poetry: Crash the Margins Guest Editor: Kamden Hilliard … Continue reading
You took the knife out of my hands, told me I was worth your time and pursuit for my smooth bones encased in the marbled meat of the season. Continue reading
Death dreams under the cerulean sky, poolside sun never sets on skin skin settles for the sun sunscreen caught in the cracks carvings etched in blood the pool, the palms, the widespread sky sometimes paradise withholds hatches spare limbs and stumps lost my mind when I took a dip a lifetime … Continue reading
we have known death to be an accident,
but you fondle my grandfather
like a monsoon swiping its knuckle
against the blue cavernous mouth
Continue reading
Curious as a small boy I crept after him one of these small mornings without him knowing and watched him from a grove of fragrant trees take in the shore and the sea and the edge of the world unfold before him and it was then I knew. My father loved the sea most of all. Continue reading
You spoke on the phone to your mother every week, a combination of mutual guilt and obligation, but she wanted to give you the news in person. It was common not to speak to your telephone-phobic father for months at a time, and your mother had always been adept at keeping secrets. Continue reading
My stomach doesn’t discriminate. I’ve thrown up Dubra. I’ve thrown up Grey Goose.
I’ve thrown up while dressed as Abraham Lincoln.
I’ve thrown up with a pirate hat on and shamrocks on my cheeks.
According to my doctor, my stomach produces a lot of acid. My first AOL screen name was TumsRockMyWorld. Continue reading
Dad always talked about America like everything there was bigger, like shit that happened there actually mattered. Mom laughed, called him a Yankee potato-eater, but I guess he wasn’t kidding after all. Continue reading
The boy and girl were laid out at the mortuary a week after Jamil’s funeral. For those who considered the thickness of hair currency, the children were rich. The townspeople, to observe the fear that devils could appear to buckle the children’s crowns, guarded the children, danced to distract themselves. Continue reading
The James Franco Review 