Issue 45: Through the Looking Glass by Isra Hassan | Artwork by fanjoy labrenz | Pride Issue Deadline 🌈
They whistle before telling us a lie. We’ve grown weary of Greats. We’re almost dead, almost alive....
Through the Looking Glass by Isra Hassan | Artwork by fanjoy labrenz
They whistle before telling us a lie.
We’ve grown weary of Greats.
We’re almost dead, almost alive.
We wish for the energy to daydream.
Catastrophe has become suddenly new and
drawn out. Idyllic gestures purview repentance.
News ingratiates to the product of lies,
paid for by a very real, very realized money.
Bone teeth. A hunger that stampedes.
The ash of past bloody pursuits.
Panic fragments the collected mind,
as we treat the aching thunderclaps….
Read Through the Looking Glass.
Isra Hassan is a Somali-American poet from Minneapolis, MN. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and can be found in DMQ Review, Poetry Wales, Poet Lore, Logic(s) Magazine and elsewhere.
Sally Fanjoy and James Labrenz, known as fanjoy labrenz, are are artists living and working in Hickory, North Carolina. Together they push the boundaries of the photographic medium as they explore light: reflection, refraction, transmission, continuity, translucence and connectivity, to create conceptual and site-specific work. Most recently their work has been exhibited at the Cain Center for the Arts in Cornelius NC, the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC, the Charlotte ArtPop Class of 2023, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and ArtFields 2024. Their project Light in Space received a grant from the United Arts Council of Catawba County for 2023. An abstract of a 2019 project at the Hickory Museum of Art with Corning Optical Solutions was published in the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies 2021 Augmented Images, Büchner-Verlag.
Issue 45 Highlights
Issue 45: twenty twenty something by Featured Writer Eloghosa Osunde
Issue 45: Mal du Siècle by Raja’a Khalid | Artwork by Kate Molloy
Issue 45: The World Below the Brine by Featured Artist Neha Misra
Issue 45: Alert Circles by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
Issue 45: Through the Looking Glass by Isra Hassan | Artwork by fanjoy labrenz
Issue 45: Once a Therapist by Christina Berke | Artwork by April Dauscha
Artists and Writers
In case you missed it….
This summer, we’re opening the doors to a seasonal series—three Summer Special Editions, each one shaped around a single word. This is an invitation to send us work that shimmers, lingers, glows. Art that refuses to explain itself too quickly.
🌈 JUNE — PRIDE
Queer joy. Chosen family. Hidden histories. The shimmer of becoming and quiet revolutions. We’re drawn to what pulses beneath the surface of celebration. The stories we tell and the ones we live. Maximum 2K words.
🔥 JULY — HEAT
Swelter, sizzle, burn. We looking for fever-dreamed, sweat-soaked, summer-scorched work that simmers and ignites. Literal heat. Emotional heat. Climate heat. Erotic heat. Longing, pressure, combustion. Bring us the burn. Maximum 2K words.
⚡ AUGUST — FLASH
Micro. Sudden. Sharp. Send us your shortest work—fiction, micro-essays, poetry, fragments, dispatches. We’re talking itty-bitty, under 500 words. We’re listening for the echo.
How it works:
To be considered for the PRIDE Issue, please send your work no later than June 10. In your note, please mention the name of the issue the work is intended for (Pride, Heat, Flash).
Submit up to 3 pieces per theme.
Maximum 2K words for PRIDE AND HEAT; maximum 500 words for FLASH.
Previously unpublished work only, please. Simultaneous submissions are fine—just keep us in the loop.
We welcome emerging and established voices—poetry, short prose (maximum 2K), hybrid forms, visual art, and unclassifiable experiments.
Surprise us. Seduce us. Leave something behind.
Can’t wait to see what you’ve got on the burner.
If you love what you’re seeing, please subscribe, share, tweet, retweet, and post, and KHÔRA will be back soon with more from Issue 45.
With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad