KHÔRA's Pride Issue | Boy in Grass by Joe Nasta | Walking Home by Ed Wolf
I spent much of my time on the AIDS ward asking patients “What do you want? What do you need?” and so very often the answer was “I just want to go home..."
In this edition:
KHÔRA's Issue 46 Pride Issue, featuring:
Issue 46: Boy in Grass by Joe Nasta
Issue 46: Walking Home by Ed Wolf
Special Summer Editions: HEAT and FLASH
Boy in Grass by Joe Nasta
with blubbering whispers
needy sunspit on our wet
lids: mud puddles:: eye sh
adow compact mirrors. Digwith hardbitten fingernails.
Can you hear yourself? On
our knoll overlooking the sea,
downy kneecaps. Perfume Genius…
Read Boy in Grass.
Joe Nasta is vibing in Seattle. He has whispered four collections of poetry into existence and his debut book of short stories Halve It is forthcoming from Blue Forge Press. Ze is an associate editor for Hobart Pulp.
Walking Home by Ed Wolf
I spent much of my time on the AIDS ward asking patients “What do you want? What do you need?” and so very often the answer was “I just want to go home,” which was something I was able to do at the end of every shift, walk home through the Mission District, to my boyfriend, my photos, my books, my things, my stuff. Elizabeth Kubler Ross had recently spoken in San Francisco and during her opening remarks she’d spoken about home and what it meant. She asked anyone who’d served in Vietnam to come into the middle of the room and sit down and face the larger circle and then she began to whisper in her deep gravelly voice, “Welcome home, welcome home,” until everyone was weeping for that which had not been said before. I’d sat with a man named Dick, someone I’d work with at a printing company in the time before AIDS, and when the doctor came in to tell him more bad news…
Read Walking home.
Ed Wolf was born in New York, the oldest of 10 children, and grew up in North Miami Florida. He worked in the HIV/AIDS field from 1983 to 2022, and is featured in the award-winning documentary “We Were Here.” He is currently at work on a memoir, which tells the story of growing up as a queer kid in Florida, attending the University of South Florida in the late 60s, life in New York’s Greenwich Village at the beginning of gay liberation, and the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. He has written numerous segments of his memoir during Corporeal Writing’s virtual hours and is very grateful for everyone who keeps that program alive and well!
Issue 46 PRIDE Special Issue Highlights
Issue 46: Quarts Inverts by Pascal Emmer
Issue 46: Smiling Ferocious Thing by Scott Nelson
Issue 46: Walking home by Ed Wolf
Issue 46: Tomar kotha bhogoban ke bole eshechi by Mei Love
Issue 46: Boy in Grass by Joe Nasta
Issue 46: Under the Gameleira Tree by Melina Oliveira
Artists and Writers
This summer, we’re opening the doors to a seasonal series—two more 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.
🔥 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.
⚡ 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 HEAT Issue, please send your work no later than July 10. In your note, please mention the name of the issue the work is intended for (Heat, Flash).
Submit up to 3 pieces per theme.
Maximum 2K words for 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 46.
With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad