Help

Issue 34 (Spring 2024)

ISSUE 34

The theme for this year’s Spring issue, Help, was born out of a simple statement of need. Sometimes we get help and sometimes we give it and sometimes neither. Sometimes we wish there was someone around to help us, to save us – even when we don’t know from what – and sometimes we save ourselves. Sometimes what helps is relinquishing yourself to the vulnerability of talking about what hurts. Help can be a polite nothing, as in “Can we help you?” and it can also be a lifeline, as in “Can I help you?” Help is what you need it to be and sometimes we all need a little of it. We needed it, here at Gulf Stream, and the authors and artists of this issue gave it to us and now we’re giving it to you. We hope it helps.
– Travis Cohen, Assistant Managing Editor

Hanif Abdurraqib on Romanticism, Renewal, Grief and “There’s Always This Year”

by Travis Cohen Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet and essayist, as well as a critic and connoisseur of music and culture. He is a man dedicated to bearing witness and his accolades are many and deserved. In 2021, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and he was recently named a…

When the Last Trumpet Sounds, I Will Be in the Mummy Room at the Museum

by Kale Hensley When the Last Trumpet Sounds, I Will Be in the Mummy Room at the Museum after Maria Rossetti, who said the opposite, presumably as a joke As a pew-child, I kept my neck tilted up, up, up. Looking, waiting. That is how I saw that the shadows…

Lunch

by Sophia Khan Lunch 0. Tarry slivers of opium, sucked from beneath your nanny’s fingernails You have heard you were a horror: cried all night; failed to thrive. You want something ineffable. Nothing you are given ever satisfies. What is the poor woman to do? One evening when you are…

How to Cum in Spite of–

by Brionne Janae How to Cum in Spite of– “For finally this body is open. And thisbody it is mine.” excerpt Malcolm Tariq’s Fucking a Proclamation   I once had a partner who made what I thought was the saddest face when she came. I didn’t understand it—and I suppose…

Patterns

by Michael Hanson Patterns I’ve had this image in my head where I’m standing in a well-lit room holding my cousin Patrick’s brain. Light fixtures flicker and the air smells like embalming solvents and I’m there alone holding Patrick’s brain, the edges of the room with that warped look you…

Mysophobia

by Kelle Groom Mysophobia musos, uncleanness; phobos, fear I’d love to live above ground if possible.  Fly to DC, take a cab to my sublet. I’m here for four months for a writing residency. Excited to see the apartment I’ve only seen in photos. Early evening when I arrive. Building…

Pilgrim

by Steve Wing Pilgrim My friend Cary once remarked that back in the ‘70s I’d occasionally declare a desire to make love to the Earth itself. I remembered having that notion, but hadn’t quite realized I’d ever said anything about it out loud (though people were making proclamations right and…

Richard Blanco’s “Homeland of My Body” is a Call Back to Our Humanity

by Samantha Leon Richard Blanco’s Homeland of My Body is a Call Back to Our Humanity Reflection gives way to reinvention in Blanco’s nearly two-hundred-page volume of new and collected poems. Ever-generous, Blanco gives the reader broad access to his best works with over one hundred pieces that call back…

Wedding Suite

by Cassandra Whitaker Wedding In The Three Chambers of My Heart Widowed Brides Embedded In My Left Shoulder Sharpen Knives ahead the banquet where they will roastpeppers stuffed with nuts, grain, and glazedwith roasted garlic; an understandingof restraint. When dancing begins the brides takeeach other by the arms. The women…

Some Game

by Emily Light Some Game The word for a boy dog is dog,so I yell Dog! when he pees on his sisterlike she’s a fencepost to mark,when he takes rabbits in his mouthand they scream like dog toysas if they’re part of the game.Maybe someone in his first life,his puppy…

Strange Wives

by Josephine Defaye Strange Wives (Editor’s Note: from the book of Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; “trans” truncates the words “transgressed,” “transgresseth,” “transgression,” and “transformed”) He that covereth a trans seeketh love;He loveth trans. The words of the trans. Trans on his lips. Trans by wine, enlargeth hisdesire…

Millenary El Paso

By Charles Haddox Millenary El Paso I. At every hour there is brushwork, and people, birds, houses. Those kiln-baked patioswhere dogs sing to the wind. Night wanders about the night,through a derelict hotel,like bread rising in a window,expectant, filled with tears. Bare aloes, violet from winter’s embalmed terrain,or pale as…

Of Inorganic Love

by Brian Johnson Of Inorganic Love The surroundings are what drive you away, and redact you.You can’t bear the houseplants, all fecund, all secretive, A house that feels in too many roomsLike a forest, a grove-grave, and must turn itself To a house alone. You need calm, a layerFree of…

Sandia Crest

by Mary Gilliland Sandia Crest My brother swung off saddle. To be alive before he calleda posse of angels to his side, he walked in turbulencewithin a larger mind: I’m on two tracks—you wouldn’tunderstand—two tracks. Seven months he’d been takingthat pony for a ride. Was his oncologist’s compassioncuriosity? Leave (should…

Transparencies in Time: Cuahpohualli embedded in ethnopoetic language poetry

by Jose Trejo Maya    (Editor’s Note: Click on the image for an expanded view) Poet/Artist Jose Trejo Maya is a remnant of the Nahuatlacah oral tradition a tonalpouhque mexica, a commoner from the lowlands from a time and place that no longer exists. Published in the UK, US, Spain,…

Preparations for an Emergency

by Hannah Matzecki Preparations for an Emergency Author Hannah M. Matzecki is a writer, mother, and the editor of Kitchen Table Quarterly. Her poetry has been featured in West Trade Review, the Ear, and Birdcoat Quarterly, as well as on any refrigerator with those little word magnet tiles. She lives…

To Satiate the Living

by Chloe Cook To Satiate the Living I Skid-mark clouds driftedwith undetectable urgency.Ofrendas of marigolds and alfeñiquesornamented most headstones. Pan dulce crumbs induced sugar-rabiesin the squirrels; horchata spillageobscured family photographs.Despite temptation, the spirits did not return. A mariachi of widowers sang beneatha hunched yew tree—its branches hunglow enough to invade…

Four Stages of Swallowing

by Amanda Gaines 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,…

Broken duplex for breaking & re-entry

by Jake Phillips Broken duplex for breaking & re-entry a knuckle braced into diamond / translated / excised intothe solar plexus. this is breaking / what it feels like—          solar systems collapsing / your lungs / atmosphere /         venus crushing mars / burn of meteor / a universe of dust…

Grounds

by Lee Peterson Grounds I cannot not bear him,love him, claim him.Can you? Call me claimant, citizen,supplicant, friend. He is mine yours, oursto love and cover. His limbsbelong to me.His death a fault of all our sins.Meant—unmeant.Does it matter? Argument.        Argument.        Air. Author Lee Peterson is the author of two full-length poetry…

Revolving Door

by T.B. Grennan Revolving Door Once there was a fat man with a little mustache who got caught in a revolving door. He worked in Midtown, at the reception desk of one of those big, postwar office buildings. It was a Tuesday, around eleven, and he had four-and-a-quarter minutes left…

Geraniums for Autumn

by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz Geraniums for Autumn Sitting in the amber glow of the television screen, Elias Stray watches reruns of All in the Family. While the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom were once the servants’ quarters, the living room was part of a grand ballroom that used to occupy most…

Retreat

by Lauren Sharon Retreat My name is Sara Jane Felt. I am childless. Synonyms please – barren, incomplete, loser. Through a series of biological failures:  miscarriages, fizzled fertility treatments, A stillbirth. Today, like every day, my husband, Danny tries to join me in my loss and grief. “I’m childless too,”…

After the Locks are Changed

by Gary Fincke After the Locks are Changed Home After the locks are changed, after he stops cursing and pounding on both doors, he hurls his key against the kitchen window while McCartney, her German Shepherd, yips and whines. Still, he calls several times each week, always after midnight with…

Editing Staff for Issue 34

Faculty Advisor: Denise Duhamel

Managing Editor: Arnaldo Batista

Assistant Managing Editor: Travis Cohen

Creative Nonfiction Editor: Michael Cuervo

Poetry Editor: Natalia Martinez

Fiction Editor: Michael Rojas

Readers: Amelia Badri, Ericka Hodge, AJ Leigh, Zachary Granat, Kevin Triana, Rosa Sophia Godshall, Bryane Alfonso

Cover Artist Serge Lecomte was born in Belgium. He came to the States where he spent his teens in South Philly and then Brooklyn. After graduating from Tilden H. S. he joined the Medical Corps in the Air Force. He earned an MA and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Russian Literature with a minor in French Literature. He worked as a Green Beret language instructor at Fort Bragg, NC from 1975-78. In 1988 he received a B.A. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Spanish Literature. He worked as a language teacher at the University of Alaska (1978-1997). He worked as a house builder, pipe-fitter, orderly in a hospital, gardener, landscaper, driller for an assaying company, bartender.