Isolation (Fall 2020)
Poetry, Fiction & Creative Nonfiction
A Season in Isolation
by Natalie Satakovski With each new issue of Gulf Stream Magazine, you’ll find a fresh palate of literary tastes represented in our pages. This fall, fourteen readers and editors—all writers from FIU’s MFA program—considered submissions, contended for their picks, and helped pull Issue 27 together. Named for our unusual social season, this issue is a…
Puzzle
by Rita Ciresi The other mothers tell me I’m lucky. Their sons are screamers, biters, head bangers. My boy is soft and silent as a bunny. Sometimes he’ll use the sign language he’s been taught at school: a hand to the throat for thirsty, a finger to the mouth for hungry. But his voice—or rather,…
The Joy You Feel
by Richard B. Simon Content warning: This story contains graphic depictions of sexual violence. If you prefer not to read it, please return to Issue 27 to select another piece. To find out why we like this piece, read the Issue 27 editor’s note A Season in Isolation. Put it in your pocket don’t forget…
Uncle Morris
by Jeffrey Wolf Probably, Great-uncle Morris had been around since I was a baby. Technically, he’d been around much longer. He was my great-uncle, after all. Yet in my memory, he appeared suddenly, a few months after my sixth birthday. This was at my grandparents’ house on Clifford Terrace in Skokie, a house I still…
Disappearing Act
by Ben Powell The magician might be drunk. Kelsey catches him pissing behind the shed between acts. It’s a long pee; she’s able to wave me over before the guy finishes. “This is a kids party,” Kelsey says to him. Ozlo the Omnipotent just shrugs. He pulls black velvet gloves back onto his hands. Steam…
Ginny’s Best Seafood Shack, Zanesville, Ohio
by John Hazard In this stiff booth, how can I soothe my sobbing mother, who insisted we come here—cheesecake for her,beer-battered shrimp for me.We’ve earned it, she said, the day after the end of my father’s long dying. In his hospice room, she slept four months on a cot. On the phone yesterday she told a one-year widow friend, “Your Dan was…
Lesbian Barbie
by Dustin Brookshire –After Denise Duhamel Tossed in the toy box,plastic body to plastic bodywith all the other Barbies,she’s horrified, when her arm that was left reaching for the sky is now up Christmas Barbie’s ball gown.(She respects consent.) People think she’s goodwith power tools, could build a deck or add a room to the Barbie Dreamhouse,but she’s never held…
Cloud
by A. Molotkov A. Molotkov is an immigrant writer. His poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things, Application of Shadows and Synonyms for Silence; he has received various awards and an Oregon Literary Fellowship. His work appears in Prairie Schooner, The Triquarterly Review, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review among others. He co-edits The Inflectionist…
Insomnia, A Ghazal
by Jessica Dubey There is no easy way to kill the weeds, only neurotoxinsto clear the brambles and invasive species that interrupt my sleep. I dress for bed in star-spangled nightgown and matching spurs,ready to ride roughshod through the five plains of sleep. Side effects may include unraveling of thread count,sudden blackout shades, lavender-scented sleeplessness.…
Zen in the Art of Generalized Anxiety
by Anthony Immergluck * My guru says it’s cheatingto meditate drunk. * I let my thoughts passlike clouds in the breezeand when I open my eyes,I can’t remember any Spanish. * Sometimes toads explode.Look it up. * All things are cyclical. I will live to see the daywhen socks and sandals come into fashion. * I had…
Sea Women
by Ashley Sojin Kim Bodies strewn across rocky soillike freshly-pulled radishes, white and lifeless, now buried undernine-hole courses and honeymoon suites with marble floors. Sparklingknives stole through Bukchon fifty years ago. Jeju is knownfor folk culture, citrus, trees stunted by sea winds,and free-diving haenyeo scouring dark underworldsfor abalone, a dying tradition of old women who…
Princess Hair Match
by Amelia Badri The nineties were princess-tastic! From Lady Diana and Xena Warrior Princess to Princess Jasmine and Ariel. Even Princess Leia lived on through those of you rocking her iconic buns in anticipation of the newest Star Wars movie. Which iconic nineties princess is your ultimate hair match? Answer these simple questions to find…
Self Portrait Underwater
by Ali Wood Ali Wood is a current MFA poetry candidate at North Carolina State University. In 2019, she was nominated for Best of the Net by Screen Door Review. Ali’s poems have also appeared in Bear Review, Plenitude Magazine, and others. Her poetry frequently centers around queer identity, mental illness, and family. Rebecca Pyle’s…
Here
by Nada Samih-Rotondo While CNN broadcast the Iraqi army’s invasion of Kuwait City to the world, I was trying to tune into my morning cartoons. That morning in August, I struggled to find a working station on our newly defective television for my cartoons. My mother received a long distance phone call from her younger…
The Magnificent Seven
by Vanessa Remmers Afterward, they ate gummy bears. They grabbed them from the bag, and pinched the spongy bodies. They did not eat them whole. Remember how we would not eat them whole? one says to another, twenty years later, over filet mignon at the Petroleum Club reunion dinner. Remember? How they ate them little…
Funny Person in a Serious Situation: Susanna Fogel on Cowriting, Kate McKinnon, and Screenplays After DOMA
by Jordan Hill Susanna Fogel wrote the epistolary novel Nuclear Family, cowrote the coming of age film Booksmart, and will direct the upcoming biopic Winner. This fall, Gulf Stream staff member Jordan Hill had an opportunity to talk with her. Here’s an edited transcript of their chat. Jordan Hill: I read that before you were…
Staff
Faculty Advisor
Denise Duhamel
Managing Editor
Natalie Satakovski
Managing Assistant Editor
Kristin Gallagher
Fiction Editor
Michael Sheriff
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Brianne Griffith
Poetry Editor
Jaden Gongaware
Readers
Yael Aldana, Lissa Batista, Jo-Anne Carrenard, Susan Falco, Michael Garcia, Jordan Hill, Brittany Owens, Madison Whatley, & Von Wise.
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