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Issue 34 Poetry

Four Stages of Swallowing

by Amanda Gaines

Ink drawings. Cacophony: head full squiggles. Longing: dragged into the air by her core. Dissociation: leaving the body like smoke. Rage: obfuscated by an opaque white box.
Symptoms by Gemma Guiomard

Four Stages of Swallowing

    

       

       

Author Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer and Ph.D. candidate in CNF in Oklahoma State University’s creative writing program. Her poetry and nonfiction are published or awaiting publication in Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Yemassee, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and Superstition Review.

Artist Gemma Guiomard is a multidisciplinary artist and first-generation American. Superpresent’s Winter 2024 published two of her organic-sculptures. Z Publishing included her poetry in Arkansas’s Best Emerging Poets and America’s Best Emerging Poets. Ro2 Art/ various Texas galleries have exhibited Gemma’s artwork. She loves gardening, bird-watching, and cuddling her cat, Hattie.