edition #003
open category
Dead Eye by Courtney Mason
Suburban Living by Jenny Chu
Hospital by Sean Thomas Dougherty
Out of the Bag by Zackary Chong
spotlight: transnationality
Medicine Line by Ben Blyth
On Mummy Leaving to Buenos Aires in August by Miguel Cullen
Mother Tongue by Monica Bason-Flaquer
portrait of us eating fish by Pei Jin Zhou
Refranes by Will Cordeiro
essay
The Flag in Its Labyrinth by Allie Hatton
Letter from the Editor
& Poetic Engineering of ‘The Home’
written by
Joseph Hamilton
editor in chief
Dear reader, beginning with edition #004, boundby will publish essays and reviews in response to new poetry, as a means of deepening the magazine’s engagement with poetics. We want to be a place for serious (playful) and relentless conversation between poems and the study of poetry.
In light of this, and of edition #003’s spotlight category, here are some reflections on the home, assembled into a short essay, that I hope might deliver us, or at least me, out of 2025, and into another year of boundby…
Dead Eye
by Courtney Mason
In the movies it is graceful,
a peace sign of two fingers,
a gentle sweep of
the hand – but for you, no.
…
Mother Tongue
by Monica Bason-Flaquer
I have lived twice as many weeks
as my son has days in this world.
He has more bones than me
but I have grown a whole new skeleton
since I moved to the country of his birth.
…
Medicine Line
by Ben Blyth
Hour seven and the air tastes
like microwaved eggs. Locked-in
the cabin lights pulse purple
then orange then purple then blue;
…
portrait of us eating fish
by Pei Jin Zhou
you,
me and my
mother's red braised
carp. a biologist, an engineer
and a traditional chinese dish. you
eye the dish hawkishly, and — in english
— opine how there must be a more optimal strategy to
…
Out of the Bag
by Zackary Chong
Wh irlwind! Schrödi nger in shambles !
Whirlw ind! Front te
eth ! Wh irlwind! Pandora unlocked! Whirlwind! H
iding fro m the rainfall!
…
On Mummy Leaving to Buenos Aires in August
by Miguel Cullen
She wore a fox fur stole, eglantine with brilliantine
sick of furs
he went bald purée or was it mousse a vision of neonoir gamusa or velour
…
The Flag in Its Labyrinth
written by
Allie Hatton
managing editor
I could say that I’ve been thinking a lot about transnationality lately, but really it’s more accurate to say that I think a lot about transnationality in general. But for all that thinking, I can’t definitively say anything about it. I cannot define what it means to you, how the shape of its sound and meaning fit onto you like skin. I could copy out a dictionary definition, but were I to do so for a term so defined by its defiance of demarcation, I would feel that I had lost my way only two steps into the labyrinth…
Hospital
by Sean Thomas Dougherty
What I never get used to is the odor
that rises from the rooms as if a syringe
of blood and bile and bleach, or the music
or should I say muttering from the TVs, a gauze
of game show chatter, a victim in a wheelchair
…
Refranes
by Will Cordeiro
No busque una buena
palabra. No vague
la tierra para un signo
de Dios. Las colimas
…
Suburban Living
by Jenny Chu
Here are things I never told you. I liked your plastic birds from Tom Thumb. I liked
your jagged scribbles of planets. I liked your studio apartment on the shitty edge of