The Representation of Light Penetrating Mud
Absence gives form to all shapes-Theodora Blüht Sand and mountains in the center. The future rises before the fjord. Mercilessly. Stones in the cemetery-the expectation. Shadows, swifter than life. Genuflection. Skin in a symbolic state. The brow performing in a muscular cavity. Bird song […]
Kingdom of the Wounded
Melody and Erica found the purple castle the night before, hidden in some cedar trees, while they were on acid. Melody’s ex-boyfriend Amos was in there, they said. Amos had been dead over a year. His blood still stained the beige carpet in Dario’s house, where we bought our drugs. We told each other that […]
Recent Titles from Fence Books and Fence Digital
Mopes: A Book of Poems in Three Acts by Kenneth Reveiz Straddling the wreckage of late capitalist America, the poems in Kenneth Reveiz’s MOPES arc urgently toward utopia-or at least they do their best. The intimate eros of liberated queerness is interrupted, undermined by a flood of dystopian American violence. The choice to fight for love and […]
Fence magazine issue #40
Fence Issue #40 Winter 2023 Poetry. Fiction. Translation. &. Other. Super-contemporary literary incitements since 1998. Shipping Mid-March 2023 To Libraries, stores, Subscribers, and Members ◊ ◊ ◊ F E A T U R I N G ◊ ◊ ◊ ♦ An Editor’s Note from Issue 40-41 Visiting Editor Edgar Garcia. […]
The 2023 Rae Armantrout Fence T-shirt
The 2023 Rae Armantrout Fence t-shirt, designed by Fence intern Cath Cai, features an excerpt from Armantrout’s poem “Falling (1)” as printed in the first issue of Fence in 1998. Receive yours with a $20 donation or higher. This link will take you to PayPal, where if you click “+Add special instructions to the seller,” […]
Duty So Great
On the basis of what I took to be his vandalized spirit, he could have been my father. “Can you help me?” he said. “Follow me,” I said, absent the intonation of a leader. I wanted to go to the top-but this man, he looked as though he had fallen. (On his jeaned knee, some […]
The Fence Calendar
An ever-updated calendar of all significant dates and times for all those who find themselves anywhere closely or loosely in the orbit of Fence. You can subscribe to this google calendar feed as well — just click or tap this sentence. ↓ ∞ ↓ ∞ ↓ ∞ ↓ ∞ ↓ ∞ ↓ ∞ ↓ To […]
Two Stories
And Paris Is Beautiful Too Katherine says we should tell the world the Gold Coast is beautiful, a real find, and I say Paris too, we should tell everyone we know, and she says we should also tell them about Rome and Florence, and I say München and Berlin, we should definitely tell everyone we […]
Photowali Didi
If you listen closely, you can hear a frail ringing noise, like when the television would run out of programming late at night in the ’80s. Only much softer. It keeps me up. At two in the morning the choral music starts again. My mother complained about it at lunch yesterday. She said, ‘the mosque […]