Valerie is an art worker in the big city. Literally the product of an American childhood in a small place where she learned to value objects and their promise, Valerie now lives and works in a storm of things, many of which are commodities-including herself. While unhappily but compliantly selling paintings at a high-pressure art […]

The hooker slips his shirt off. In the moment where he can’t see me I steal a glance at his chest. His ribs. The lines of muscle showing abdominals. Not an ounce of fat. I look away before I’m noticed. For years I’ve printed shirts in this shop for a man teetering on the edge […]

This essay also appears in print on page 211 in the Forum pages of Issue #40.   There is a form, that is not form, and that can be found in many collections of American poetry. This not-form is the arrangement. Rooted in the Romantic fragment, French prose poetry, palimpsestic modernism, Benjamin’s Arcades, Queneau’s Cent […]

The empty hallways were covered with worn-out carpet. A ventilator worked against the smell of fish, burnt fat, and sweat. I felt a pain behind my eyes, in my temples. Some of the cabin doors had numbers on them. A sign directed me to the cafeteria where the night workers were eating dinner. I could […]

Including Essays by FENCE Editors and Selected Articles and Interviews   In 2009, FENCE published a two-volume anthology entitled A BEST OF FENCE: THE FIRST NINE YEARS. They are available, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, through Small Press Distribution. The editors of FENCE up to that point in time contributed essays about their experiences working on the magazine, all of […]

When I was younger, I worked for some years as a tutor for a little boy who was the scion of a very wealthy family with its own peculiar culture and a whole battery of customs I never fully understood. I lived in a little cottage on the family property. Besides me and the boy, […]

The vending machine cast a fluorescent triangle into the darkness of the hotel lobby, a glow that seemed not to illuminate the floor but rather to float millimeters above it. We stood in the empty doorway. No other lights were on, inside or out, and the night sky behind us was a wash of black […]

To download and read “from logophobe” by the Blunt Research Group–as intended by the author(s)–with correct pagination and lineation as a pdf from the Fence issue #40 forum, please click on the below blue text.  Lower-quality (in terms of the pdf) images can be seen below the link. blunt-proofs-bluntresearch-40

Exquisite Corpse as Breaking Down The first one came after Gram’s diagnosis / I snagged my running shoes / a turkey tail jutted from my left ankle / I shoved my foot in anyways / I ran past carolers / I ran on a full stomach / I ran past swarms of twinkle lights & […]