Launched June 2022
Editor’s Note
Elena Bentley
untethered magazine holds space for more than just poetry and prose; it provides a home for “those strange beings in between”—a phrase that struck, and has stuck with me, since I was first introduced to this wickedly eclectic literary journal a handful of years ago. It’s also the phrase that threads this poetry special issue of untethered together.
“Is this us?” asks Kate Marshall Flaherty in “White on Green.” I find myself wondering the same: are we strange beings navigating the relationship between our old and new selves while our once familiar world shifts and moves forward—with or without us?
Yes, we are. It became clear the longer I sat with the poems in vol. 12 that our relationships are not static. Many of the speakers in these poems occupy, and explore from within, a place between what was and what might be. Relationships with ourselves, our bodies, our memories, our partners, our families, our cultures, languages and homes, and even our relationship with the planet continually evolve and change, forcing us to exist as strangely fluctuating beings.
Although I, too, am a strange being who often finds herself constantly unsure and confused by the instability of all my relationships, I am sure of my relationship with untethered. I am grateful to our managing editor, Stephanie McKechnie, for trusting me to take the lead and curate our first poetry issue. I am also very thankful for all the volunteer readers, copy editors and proofreaders, without whom this issue would likely not exist.
No matter how strange a being you are, or how in flux you find yourself, I hope you find comfort in knowing we are all “suspended / between foreground, / [and] background,” between “shovel and the sky.”
At the Friendship Store
Christine Wu
Inching through narrow, half-lit aisles, I’m afraid I might shatter bottles of Shaoxing wine and all the sauces: light soy, dark soy, black bean, oyster, fish. I am afraid I might shatter this longing for a haunting ghostly taste. Light soy, dark soy, black bean, oyster, fish, fermented liquids brimming with a past, a longing, a haunting ghostly taste. Memory trails me, urges me to tiptoe amidst fermented liquids brimming with a past I have lost but not forgotten. Memory trails me, urges me to tiptoe inside this tiny Asian grocery full of foods I have lost but not forgotten. A lapsed capsule. This tiny Asian grocery, owned by an old man and an old woman, reminds me of a lapsed capsule, what I left behind. The old man and the old woman remind me of an unfamiliar home, those who left behind everything they knew in exchange for this: an unfamiliar home in a place they couldn’t belong, offering everything they knew in exchange for a whisper of hope for me who now doesn't belong here at the Friendship Store, where a whisper of help from me is in English, my Chinese long abandoned. Here, at the Friendship Store, I am someone who needs English translations, Chinese long abandoned in pursuit of seaweed, sesame oil, frozen har gow. I am someone who needs Sichuan peppercorns, egg noodles, dried shrimp, seaweed, sesame oil, frozen har gow— a desperate attempt to nose my way back into a bowl of Sichuan peppercorns, egg noodles, dried shrimp. This long-remembered comfort food desperately nosing its way back into my present, my thin tether to a long-remembered comfort found in bottles of Shaoxing wine and all the sauces, my thin tether to past lives inching through narrow, half-lit aisles.
house fire
Sheri Doyle
once when my house was on fire I saw my face upside down in the golden doorknob turning around and around while above me a hand held the door shut later in a showroom of alarm systems, locks fireproof safes, doorknobs a gallery of keyholes again I saw my face turning in the spin of a knob the ghost-fire shining behind my shoulder and I could smell it the distinct aura of a blaze that stayed in the aired-out house lingering, an unwanted guest for weeks, then years and it followed me still not like a bonfire, or candles blown out not the phantom aerosols of a forest charred to the ground not a burnt piece of toast or a badly burnt loaf not the tang of a thousand burnt loaves but the pungent whiff of scorched sweat on bed sheets the trail of soft morning steps slippers toward the bookshelf the singe of poetry pages the infinite list on the refrigerator all the luminous reasons to keep this thing going the dense spice of our vinyl records all our songs molten the sting in the nostrils of the knitted blanket azure, wrapped around us outside that one night up at Balsam Lake when a home was just the air around us
What’s Your Garden Like, Brother?
Taidgh Lynch
Do your beans climb tall? Do your strawberries creep over fields? Those wild limbs of yours can grow anything! Do you still dig for potatoes, or have you forgotten their sweetness? You and your love for loads of cream and butter—easy on the pepper! But what does a ghost want with a garden? What use, dear brother, would you have for a trowel, rake, or hoe? What use is there now for green fingers? I stand lost in you, dear brother, knee deep in soil, caught somewhere between your shovel and the sky.
My Mother Once Told Me Our House is an Embassy
S. Mahamud
we leave red rules and white tape at the door; bureaucracy has no place here inside these four walls, we are home again. as a representative, I must act a certain way she tells me. I think about it, baby politician frankincense smoke stuck to my blazer cloves crushed in fingernails at school, a reminder: I’m dressed to return to the embassy I think of the baaris that waits for me on the stove my sister clapping her hands to kill fruit flies if I close our eyes, I can hear a mosquito’s buzz and murder is once more justified. I called 999 one time before I remembered on this linoleum soil, foreign rules are law. Qalbiga waa mashi quriida ala helo: “home is where the heart is” a phrase that doesn’t translate so well
This issue includes new work by Khaloud Al-Muttalibi, T. Best, McKenna James Boeckner, Kayleigh Cline, Lana Crossman, Sheri Doyle, Guy Elston, Rosa Fernandez, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Tea Gerbeza, Vera Hadzic, Wren Jones, Taidgh Lynch, S. Mahamud, Andrea Margaret Martineau, Jill Michelle, Pauline Peters, Lauren Prousky, Michael Russell, Dawn Steiner, Matthew Walsh, Fran Westwood, Toast Wong and Christine Wu.
Cover art by Maia Stark
untethered magazine 