M E N A C E
issue three
FEATURING
poetry
fiction
essay
hybrid
art
interview
issue design based on original layout by Disha Trivedi
EDITORS’ LETTER
Adapt or perish.
So wrote H. G. Wells in “The Mind at the End of Its Tether:” “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.” We often think of adaptation as something to strive for. It’s how we survive, and how we’ve survived this long—in this way, it makes us human. But are there things to which we should not adapt? That might cut us off from that very humanity?
This question runs through the third issue of M E N A C E. Here, people adapt to new environments, from a medieval convent overtaken with strange new growth to a settlement on Mars. They “mutate,” as in Oleg Bell’s haibun-esque hybrid piece and in Nick Porisch’s horror story of grief. But these pieces, such as the poems of Jenna Jaco and Oladosu Michael Emerald, also ask whether we are adapting to paradigms that instead ought to be resisted—like the systems of imperial and patriarchal violence—and they speculate as to how that resistance might be expressed. Perhaps some deviance in the privacy of the forest. Perhaps a love that you refuse to let the world destroy. Or perhaps the forming of community despite all our inevitable ends.
Why let the world turn you into something cold and industrial, Clara Messina seems to ask in her photograph “embrittlement”? Is it any prize to be displayed in the “museum of compliance”? We are always supposed to be optimizing, but it’s worth asking, for what? What if in the search for a more and more frictionless existence, we shed too much? In the A.I. age—and particularly in our reality, where A.I. mostly profits a handful of already-rich white men—it’s worth asking if some of that “friction” is really the good stuff.
This issue of M E N A C E is also our most haunted to date. From Kurt Edward Milberger’s “[godfather death],” which echoes in the recesses of our brain like a fable from childhood, to the missing mother in Elena Zhang’s “The Myth,” to the recurring faces in Meredith Nnoka’s “Everyone I meet I meet again,” to the spectral presence of the muse in this poem by Jennifer Jantzen, to the dream- and nightmare-like artwork of Samantha Lucia and Thomas Riesner, this issue is full of hauntings and things half-remembered. I can’t help but think of the brownies of Scottish folklore, kindly helpers who become malevolent boggarts if they aren’t appreciated. In our ceaseless drive to adapt and optimize, we should be careful what we discard: it might come back to haunt us.
Stay in the weirdness.
[godfather death]
fiction by Kurt Edward Milberger
“…One day, the king called for the most renowned physician in the land. When the young man arrived, the page led him into the sickroom where he found death standing at the head of the king’s bed. As ever, he did not acknowledge his godfather, but instead consulted with the sickened king, who described his rattling phlegmy cough, the flame of his fever, the scabrous lesions of his pox. Relax, the physician said, rest, take this herb, and you will recover, you will rise a new man, a new king. The herb tasted to the king of cinnamon root.
Sometime after the king’s recovery the physician came again to the castle. He arrived in the sickroom to discover his godfather at the foot of the prince’s bed. Was there a nod of acknowledgement then, a subtle gesture of hello, a dip of the chin toward the chest? The prince contorted his mouth, lamented his weeping wounds. The physician knew that the prince’s fate was sealed, but how could he tell his king?”
—read more
LITURGY OF THE DIRT
fiction by Larisa Greway
“…The honeysuckle raises itself, offering. We have an understanding, this bush and I. The drop of nectar slides out when I squeeze, and I tip it into my mouth, and it sparkles like communion wine on my tongue.”
—read more
THE MYTH
poetry by Elena Zhang
“…When I asked my father where the myth was, he laughed, and said, who? The closets were bare. The kitchen was filled with fleas. My plum bruises grew ripe enough to eat.”
—read more
WILDWOOD
fiction by Adrielle Munger
“…She closed both eyes, sucked the air in low, and shot deep into the thicket. Then she cocked the gun and kept fire and fire til the shells ran out. When she was done, she smiled and sighed, cheeks flushed with a feeling she didn’t dare name.”
Chronic Werewolf Hedonism,
Unemployable
hybrid by Oleg Bell
“The neurologist says that it's not really a neurological condition, sends you to go see the psychologist about the chasing and the anger and the too much of it, never mind that every bone in your body stretches and twists and you can feel it in your dreams. The psychologist half-listens and scribbles notes he won't let you see and when the knots in your stomach start forming into a tapestry of panic says there's not much he can suggest, recommends you go to the dermatologist, who says growing fur is an existing condition but there's nothing to do about it but shave, and in any case maybe in your situation you should go talk to a dog trainer. The dog trainer, tired lady with lines on her face for laughing and frowning both, gives you the number of some neurologist she knows. Before you can squeeze out any semblance of thankfulness she adds, or maybe you should go talk to Liz. She's got the same thing and she's running a sort of support group about it.”
—read more
[I can talk about the hospital]
poetry by Meredith Nnoka
“I can talk about the hospital all day, but what
is there to say that hasn’t already been screamed
from its barred windows? That place is a vacant nightmare,
to which you can attest. They tried to separate us,
me from you, and in doing so stole the speech
from my throat. I spent that week in an all-encompassing
silence until I broke to tell a woman her life
of suffering had to mean something, because I needed
to believe it for myself. I have never returned,
yet perhaps I have never left…”
—read more
the muse is walking
me home
poetry by Jennifer Jantzen
“…the world was once my egg
2 crush: so fun, so fragile, so puking
a block frm home, chunky insides
spread out like snow angels on
the winter steps—gimme a min.
[the sound of
barfing.]
back. im
almost home + the trees r so slick
that they’re melting in the dark.”
—read more
QUEER LOVE COUNSEL FROM RUTH & NAOMI
hybrid by Yasmine Bolden
Q: Dear Ruth and Naomi,
I am a queer teenage girl in a loving situationship except that the situation is that the girl I am in love with says that we’re soulmates but she also has a long term boyfriend named T who will propose to her on graduation day. He’s not the one who stays up with her at night beneath childhood bedroom blankets, though, translating and untranslating her fairy pink Bible until it reassures her that God could maybe love the gays.”
NIHILISM, GUN VIOLENCE, AND THE LONG WALK
essay by Emma Johnson-Rivard
“…Here, both Ray and Peter understand the power of the state apparatus that surrounds them. Their goals involve working within the framework of that apparatus, not subverting it—an interesting addition in the canon of dystopian death game films, especially given that Francis Lawrence directed four Hunger Games movies and is on deck to release a fifth in 2026. The spectacle of resistance is not an unfamiliar story for him. Yet, The Long Walk is less a story of rebellion against the brutality of an uncaring militaristic state—though the American depicted in Lawrence’s film is certainly that—but instead a journey through that America by the young men who grew up in it. Notably, all the walkers respond in ways to both the soldiers that follow and ultimately murder them and the larger apparatus of the imperialistic forces that host the Walk in ways that mirror real-life responses to American gun violence.”
—read more
Everyone I meet I meet again
poetry by Meredith Nnoka
“…Listen, you must understand me:
I’ve encountered faces I once knew on every street corner
in Chicago, in the jail, in dark theaters, at my local café,
in a restaurant in Minneapolis, on the staircase
of a Smithsonian museum. Worse is when they’ve recognized
me first. And where I saw affirmation of my own worth
reflected back at me, there was instead brutal evidence
of my haunting.”
I LEARN FIRE IN REVERSE
poetry by Oladosu Michael Emerald
“I walk out the flame
like it owed me.
shirtless, yes—
because shame was never skin-deep,
just borrowed heat
from men
who mistook silence
for strength.
the cut unscabs.
blood pulls itself back into veins,
the slap unhands itself mid-air
& calls my name like a question:
Are you still afraid to cry?”
—read more
POST-FEED
poetry by Jenna Jaco
“The dog bites the hand / The hand pulls a hair / mixes it into his (the hand’s) protein shake / slaps the dog with a cutlet again / grills the cutlet in a cast iron skillet / He’s literally never washed it / Not even the fake way you’re supposed to wash cast iron / Like a college comforter / that motherfucker never sees the water / or a sud iridescing / By the way here’s a list of things that happened to me today / I’m not making any of this up / Number 1 / A coworker told me to stay on the call after the meeting / so he could talk dreamy at me / Said my state has it all figured out / Said the snowflakes obstruct his free speech…”
—read more
BLUE RIBBON
fiction by Nick Porisch
“Susan was still alive when the hogs began to understand basic English. She never got to see it firsthand – the cancer metastasizing in her bones kept her chained to IV drips and electrical monitors in the city – but I told her about it during the sterile nights in the hospital that I spent by her side.
Every night, she asked me to ramble about anything until the pain meds drew the curtains shut on her waking mind and she fell asleep. I read her scribbled poetry, like when we were first married twenty-five years ago, and relayed stories from our two children in college and high school. I told her about the farm, and I told her about Crystal – the smartest of the swine, and getting smarter all the time. If Susan thought any of this was strange, those final months of her life were too fogged by pain and painkillers for her to articulate it.
I’ve spent most of my life working in the field of mutation…
—read more
Roleplay where you’re the surveillance state
poetry by Jenna Jaco
“There is no escape. There is no other word
for “spread.” You detect movement and choke it.
This country respects only property…”
—read more
electric meat prayer
poetry by Shae
“last wet wire in a museum of compliance.
a twitch archived as belief.
good girl, glitch girl—
meat under warranty.
sometimes the current remembers her—
kicks, hymns, seizure-light.
for three minutes, god is voltage.
then: blackout, reboot, apology.
faces showing their benevolent hum.
the drone becomes doctrine,
the doctrine migraine…”
—read more
NEW HOLE
fiction by Judy Slitt
“During her second week on Mars, Grace developed a new orifice. It was in her cleavage and hurt when she put on her push-up bras. The part between the cups, with the bow, pressed into it and the friction made it seep with a gamey, purple substance. She squeezed it out and rolled it between her fingers. It felt like jam.
This wasn’t in the pamphlets, she thought.
But when she told her Martian husband, he laughed. “You’re growing!” he said.
At night, he spooned her in bed, reaching his arm around to massage the new hole as she watched the twin moons rise over the dusty red mountains…”
—read more
Interview with Meredith Nnoka
author of Les Portes
M E N A C E: “One of the major themes of issue 3 is adaptation and how that’s not always a good thing. How we are asked to adapt to terrible structures and circumstances, and how the human animal is very adaptive, but sometimes to its own detriment. This collection seems of a piece with that, because it traces the ways people adapt to harm by enacting it on others or accepting/internalizing it. But I strongly believe that this collection is also, as captured in the title, a window or a door to another way of being—resistance, nonviolence, true justice. Kind of an intense question, but do you have any thoughts on how to resist adaptation to the horrors but still survive? How can we keep les portes to a better world open in ourselves without exploding from the positive pressure?”
MN: “We’re living in an era of daily atrocities, horrors, fears, and injustices. We’re assailed every day by news of massive violations of rights and mass roundups and murders of those who do not cleanly fit into narratives of nationhood. This is the reality we’re in, and it’s the reality we’re fully expecting that we’ll live with for potentially a long time. The truth is that if we do not adapt to the horrors, we’ll succumb to our despair. Adaptation is an important component of human survival. But adaptation is not the same thing as inaction or inertia, and this is a distinction I think is vital…”