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Marge Piercy reminds us that we still like gods who have faces. Abubakar Auwal means light. Ace Chu puts time in his pocket and pats it flat. Once Madeline Rosales adds all the shadows to the trees, Michael Loyd Gray’s hunters emerge from the forest. J.M. Braun works the nails out of the coffin with a butter knife, and after George Goetz breaks it to us that Mr. Pelletier has mysteriously disappeared, we sit down at his neighbors’ dinner table—where Jaime Gill wants to play The Drinking Game. B. Fulton Jennes wears a prayer shawl of regret, while Paige Blair’s brown Judas kisses Jesus. (Will Dan Rivas play Jesus in the pageant?) The last customer asks Neha Rayamajhi where she’s from as she cleans his table. Alayna Powell's white friends keep telling her she's beautiful. Sara R. Burnett brings us back to grade school to unlearn everything. When we don’t know the first thing anymore, we ask EJ Green, “Show us.” And they do. Meanwhile, Laura Leigh Morris murmurs the lie “It’s pretend. It’s only pretend,” because that’s all she has to give.
POETRY
MARGE
PIERCY
“What we revere and don’t”
and other poems
“People like gods with faces. / It’s still true. Fundamentalists / have a male god who thinks / just like them.”
B. FULTON
JENNES
“Father-Daughter Dirge”
and other poems
"You hauled her up, clutched her to your chest, / reeled her around the room in a paso-doble dirge.”
MADELINE
ROSALES
“And God Steps Away”
and other poems
“Be God. Step way back for a second. Imagine this folded earth as bed sheets dropped in heaps onto the floor.”
J.M.
BRAUN
“Nightcap”
and other poems
​
“before the night fulfills itself a barfight’s thrown elbow / knocks my head into dreaming”
ALAYNA
POWELL
“A poem you won’t ever touch”
​
and other poems
​
“this poem is aware of her surroundings. / she still feels those eyelids rise & fall”
ABUBAKAR
AUWAL
“mud-caked night”
and other poems
“I mean light, yeanling into the tummy of / broken hymns & breeze whizzing like a dead // melody”
ACE
CHU
“First Day on Patrol”
and other poems
​
“Time becomes a thing you can put into your breast pocket and pat flat.”
SARA R.
BURNETT
“Is Pluto a Planet?"
and other poems
​
“One day, a planet, the next — / poof! All the textbooks, wrong.”
FICTION
EJ
GREEN
“Floodplain”
​​
"I moshed and lived! I think I'm bruised, though.' 'That means you did it right,' I said, sounding undeservedly authoritative."
JAIME
GILL
“The Drinking Game”
​
“Welcome to Make-Your-Own-Misadventure—where YOU control the story!”
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NEHA
RAYAMAJHI
“An American November”
​
“Tonight, an Ethiopian woman sits next to me. She has a baby in her arms. They look exhausted but peaceful, like two pieces of everything that belong together.”
DAN
RIVAS
“Jesus in Your Heart”
​
"'Let's be centaurs,' she said. 'Like goat people?' 'That's a satyr. Centaurs are horse people.'"
MICHAEL LOYD
GRAY
​“Hunters”
​
"“They were listening to Johnny Cash on the jukebox, those hunters, those fat men in camouflage clothes and silly-ass hats and a pinch of Skoal in their gums…”
SUBNIVEAN
EPISODE 7:
WAR
Get ready to be read to like a baby at bedtime. In Episode 7, Subnivean presents a boy trying to figure out his neighbor's disappearance and a mom trying to figure out her boy. Stories by George Goetz and Laura Leigh Morris. Special thanks to voice actors Michael Daniel Vodzogbe and Larissa Wolfer—and to our audio team: hosts Robert Ferrara and Larissa Wolfer, editor Ryan Joyce and producer/editor Soma Mei Sheng Frazier.
LAURA LEIGH
MORRIS
GEORGE
GOETZ
WATCH
I DON'T GO TO
CHURCH ANYMORE
by
PAIGE
BLAIR
"Holding hands around the table
asking, asking, asking—"
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Paige Blair, a sophomore at Cazenovia High School, was named winner of the 2023-24 Subnivean New Writers’ Award competition. Read her poem here.
"Paige Blair's poems tell us she no longer goes to church. Yet this divine young writer is earning her own following: get in now, readers, before the pews are packed too full. "
​
— Subnivean
