The Shattering
Pulp Literature Issue 41, Winter 2024 features the remarkable poetry of DS Maolalai, Purbasha Roy, and Aaron Poochigian.
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
~Dylan Thomas
Watch the shape of the universe change in unforgettable ways, with the opening stanzas of their incredible pieces here.
Objects and broken objects.
death comes to bodies
like a frightened trapped animal
lost within winter-dug
pits. and trying to get
out. and getting out
eventually. so what use the trap
when you collect it? it happens;
something bites through wire
and you decide to throw it away. …
DS Maolalai has received eleven nominations for Best of the Net and eight for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections: Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019), and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).
To make you stay
To make you stay I toy you with after images of
remains. I alone shall sit on couch and wait for you
to catch up and feed me, a fresh baked sonnet. Wind
understanding the absence would try compensate &
dance among grass flowers. If this happening had any
feasible sound, what would that be, but the sounds of
becoming an estuary. I don’t know, how many have
experienced hunger is not a journey from a hole to
another. It is a conflict within. In defence of balances,
kitchen would search for pepper smells. I avoid. If you
leave how my sneezes would stiffen like silence of
blank paper. Vaporize of words from atmosphere of
sheets. Like Sanskrit from Indian streets. …
Purbasha Roy is a writer from Jharkhand India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SIAMB, Bluestem, DASH, View, The Bayou Review, long con magazine, Hive Avenue, and elsewhere.
All the Rage: One Plus One Is Three
You can relax now, killer. You have rolled
the monster’s corpse up in the blood-stained rug
and dumped the whole burrito in a cold
puddle behind Armando’s Midtown Deli.
It could be weeks before the thing gets found.
Yes, you have done your chores and now are snug
in bed and fondling Li-Ling’s little belly,
imagining the kid inside of her
in black and white, like in an ultrasound.
Aaron Poochigian, award-winning author of four books of poetry, has published in Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and POETRY. Before this excerpt from his verse-novel Mr. Either/Or: All the Rage (June, 2023), “you,” an FBI agent, have just offed Aquila Blair, an enemy agent who threatened your girlfriend Li-Ling Levine. Li-Ling has just discovered that she is carrying your child. Find Mr. Either/Or: All the Rage here: www.amazon.com/Mr-Either-Rage-Aaron-Poochigian/dp/B0B5KQVCPV.
To read the rest of these powerful poems, pick up your copy of Issue 41, Winter 2024!
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