This is an excerpt from a project-in-process attempting to map both seen and unseeable intersections via image, myth, letters, fiction, lies, memoir, footnotes, and outright exaggeration. The siamese twin demi-goddesses Sanjallentoa and Ltaajsonnale were not born under the Gemini stars, as you astrological gurus erroneously claim. Instead, they were born in fall during a year…

Note from Jess: I asked a few poets I know to share how fiction has informed or influenced their poetry. Eleni Sikelianos I have been as influenced by fiction as poetry. Moby Dick and A la recherche du temps perdu were hugely important to the poems in my book Earliest Worlds — lifted lines, twisted…

There have been a number of conversations lately about the teaching of creative writing (See Roxane Gay , A D Jameson, and Aubrey Hirsch at HTML Giant and Amber Sparks at Big Other), whether it can or should be taught. These conversations revolve mostly around teaching college students. But I want to take a step…

Steve Goodman’s Moby Book by jessstoner There’s so many songs/entire albums based on Moby Dick. It’s good to get a balance for the kinds of bands interested in taking it on. Rose Berlin’s Coraline (Neil Gaiman’s Coraline) by jessstoner Based on Raymond Carver’s “So Much Water Close to Home” The Glasswave’s Lolita by jessstoner The…

Note from Jess: For years now, Beverly Nelson has been writing a book based on the index of a book never written. This is a long-term project. Beverly is not finished with the book. She has, however, been kind of enough to share how she’s writing it.) Douglas Blau’s Index was used as an essay…

In May of 2010, I emailed Yelena Bryksenkova because I I knew that her Georges Perec watercolor for the cover of The Review of Contemporary Fiction would be a perfect gift for a favorite professor. Yelena, so kind and quick on the reply, relayed the bad news: my professor had already bought it. Of course…

Eve tells Adam that it’s newness she collects. That she gathers gestures. “Cubs will nurse from any tiger too tired to object” is her proof. When she doesn’t get the response from him she wants, she says, “You never rub my feet anyway” and tells him, “Fine then, inhabit your own eternal summer.” Somewhere in…

Note from Jess: Much of what has been posted here in the last two weeks has contemplated the hallucinatory leaps, the generative space between things. For Alexander Lumans, Shawn Huelle, Mary Hamilton and myself, these jumps traverse the white space between text and text and image. In Travis Macdonald’s The O Mission Repo, we don’t…

You’re walking. And you don’t always realize it, / but you’re always falling. / With each step you fall forward slightly. / And then catch yourself from falling. / Over and over, you’re falling. / And then catching yourself from falling. / And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same…

A brief video and a story by Elizabeth Ellen. Prepare for Bloat Adam says, You want all of your relationships to be on your terms. Which seems like a ridiculous statement, like saying I want to be healthy or I want to not get in a car accident on my drive home. I call that…

Allergies, Diagnosed: Attic dust, sandbox sand, pumpkin seeds. Knowing your fears does not always protect you from them; that should have been your husband’s job. Allergies, Undiagnosed: On your geocaching honeymoon to Nigeria, you and your one and only twenty-two-year-old husband dined under an umbrella tree of exotic fruit shaped either like mythological horns (his…

Note from Jess: Today, Alex gives us his theory of “The List.” Tomorrow he puts it into practice. So make sure to check-in tomorrow to read Alex’s “Dictionary of Your Fears.” Parochial Plaids, Self-Cogitation, the Water Moccasin Myth, and “I Might Want to Come Back”: How You’re Already Trying to Figure Out What This List…