"Abelard, Abraham, Absalom" and "Isaac, Isaiah, Ishmael" in SLEEPINGFISH 8
Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 07:26PM
The new issue of Sleepingfish is now available, including two sections of my recently completed novella Cataclysm Baby: "Abelard, Abraham, Absalom" and "Isaac, Isaiah, Ishmael." Edited by Gary Lutz and Derek White, the issue also includes "literary text objects" by Ryan Call, Anna DeForest, Sasha Fletcher, Nina Shope, Rachel May, David McLendon, Eugene Lim, The Brothers Goat, Lito Elio Porto, Adam Weinstein, Diane Williams, Dennis Cooper, Elliott Stevens, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alec Niedenthal, Amelia Gray, Matt Bell, Eduardo Recife, David Ohle, Evelyn Hampton, Émilie Notéris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Cooper Renner, Christine Schutt, M. T. Fallon, Daniel Grandbois, Julie Doxsee, Terese Svoboda, Blake Butler, Stephen Gropp-Hess and Ali Aktan Aşkın.
As a teaser, here are the first few lines of "Isaac, Isaiah, Ishmael":
Even at birth they were already damaged, their brittle bones contraction-crushed, powdered by the mother's powerful organs, her pressing canal: All those tiny ribs snapped and splintered upon the stainless of the operating room steel. All those skulls crooked and cracked, all those twisted greenstick limbs. We lifted each child out from the mother's body and into surgeries of its own, did our best to splint and screw our prides back together. So few survived, and for what next chance? On what legs would they stand, with no milk to grow them strong except from the body which had already failed to make them so?
You can order Sleepingfish 8 here for just twelve dollars. While you're at the site, be sure to check out the online excerpts and extras, "including a linear narrative formed from sentences from each author & a setlist of music from current & past Sleepingfish contributors."
Thank you to Gary Lutz and Derek White for including me in this issue among so many great writers. The last two issues of Sleepingfish have been fantastic, and I can't wait to read this newest one when it arrives.


Reader Comments (2)
Among the many reasons I'm looking forward to 2010.
Thanks, John! I hope you had a good new year's!