Issue 36 Summer Special Edition: Please Leave A Message | Ed Wolf
"'Hi! This is Ed. Sorry I missed you. Please leave a message.' That’s what I finally came up with after eleven tries. Later that night, Bob called again. He was crying. He said Russ had almost died."
Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.
Issue 36: Special Edition
Do you have more in your inbox than you can read in a day? In Issue 36’s Special Edition, we’ve sent you one piece at a time rather than the entire issue all at once. If you’d like to be considered for future publications, scroll down to learn more about KHÔRA’s 500 Words and KHÔRA’s Images.
Today’s essay is by Ed Wolf. Ed has told stories at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Kiev International Film Festival, and Side-by-Side LGBT Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. In San Francisco he’s performed at Oasis, The Lost Church, National Queer Arts Festival, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Verdi Club, The Swedish American Hall, Brava Theatre, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and many others. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco; Rebel Yell: Gay Men of the South; The AIDS Reader; Queer and Catholic; Fray: Sex and Death; Christopher Street and The James White Review. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1996.
The artwork accompanying “Leave a Message” is by Kirk Read. Kirk is a writer and analog collage artist in Portland, OR. He is the author of How I Learned to Snap and his collage work has been featured in Contemporary Collage Magazine and at Le Mieux Galleries in New Orleans.
Check out the full Issue 36 Special Edition, and if you missed our previous issues, visit our Archive.
Please Leave A Message by Ed Wolf | Artwork by Kirk Read
I took the answering machine out of its box, set it on the table, and read through the operating manual before recording my first message.
“Hello this is Ed Wolf but you’ve reached my…” I stopped and hit rewind. Too wordy.
“Hello this is Ed Wolf and I can’t come to the phone right now because…” I stopped and hit rewind. Don’t need reasons why I’m not picking up.
“Hello this is Ed Wolf…” and paused. Do I need my last name? Do I need my name at all? Do I need to say my phone number? Do I need to ask them to leave theirs?
I called some friends who already had answering machines and listened. One talked way too fast. The other wanted my number, even if I thought they had it.
“Hello, this is Ed…” Not loud enough.
“Hello, this is Ed…” Too whiny….
Read Please Leave A Message.
Issue 36 Highlights
Issue 36 Special Edition: Strawberry Lipgloss
Issue 36 Special Edition: Lost in Midtown
Issue 36 Special Edition: Olympia Billiards
Issue 36 Special Edition: Gut Feeling
Issue 36 Special Edition: Mother-In-Law
Issue 36 Special Edition: Please Leave A Message
Artists and Writers
We’re looking for features and our future teams! To enter KHÔRA’s collaborative waters:
Writers, read about KHÔRA’s 500 Words here.
Artists, send your artwork to KHÔRA's Images here.
Team-based, collaborative, and curated, KHÔRA is a form that is continually opening. We invite you to join us in sustaining it together. We don't believe in rejections. KHÔRA’s 500 Words is about considering how multiple voices can be heard; how frameworks, traditions, and projects can inform each other; and how new perspectives emerge from collaboration and openness. If you are a visual artist or interested in sharing your artwork or images, ready about KHÔRA’s Images here.
Your words/images will always remain active in KHÔRA’s ocean, and you won’t ever receive a notice of rejection from us. We know this process is not perfect; we wish to stay open to the possibility that at any point, your work will be a fit for a curated issue or team collaboration. This doesn’t need to be a completed piece—think of it like a sample of your work at any length up to 500 words.
Once you send 500 Words, your work will remain in our inclusive and expansive space. You can send 500 Words more than once—there’s no limit to how many times you can send us new work; just no repeats, please. KHÔRA doesn’t publish previously published work, but feel free to share any 500 words you want as a sample (published or unpublished).
If you love what you’re seeing, please subscribe, share, tweet, retweet, and post, and KHÔRA will be back soon.
With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad