We heard a statistic once (unconfirmed, possibly completely
made-up) that most new independent literary journals fold after two
issues. RCR05 marks the two-YEAR
anniversary of Rabbit Catastrophe Press.
Five issues of the review and a growing catalog of fabulous
ScrapChaps. To brag about all
this, we’ve gathered a grandiose collection of writing and art:
Poetry from Paul David Adkins, Tracie Renée Dawson, Charles
Decker, Jennifer Gravley, Caitlin L. Heinz, Joni Lee, Bianca Spriggs, and
Changming Yuan.
Fiction from Matthew Dube, Dawn Wilson, and J. Edward Vanno.
And art (mysterious and beautiful) from the incredible
Dmitry Borshch.
This issue is a brigadier. It is a blunderbuss.
It is your friend that was loud and inappropriate at your holiday work
party but is actually a very lovely fellow to be around. It is that bad kid from your past who grew
up to find glory. Mythical and biblical. Semiotic and diluvian. You might
develop a phobia of immolation, bearded deacons, or Mayor Koch after consuming
this issue, but you also might finally learn to dance or read a map.
This is also the first issue that features our newly
implemented one-word bio restriction.
Our contributors rose to the challenge. Here are the bios rendered into “poetry” (with function
words added for clarity):
SuiGeneris artist
(and) untenured hyracotherium
killn (some) bacon.
(They) change
effervescence
(and) velleity
(way out)
beyond
(a) tiny wave.
Who is what word? You’ll have to read the issue to find
out. Here is a real poem from
inside its pages:
Revival
by Jennifer Gravley
Pacing the short hall between our bedrooms
whose white walls we’ve grubbed up, I pound
the King James I’ve pinched from the TV top,
preaching to my sister who fidgets as if
feeling the hard bench bite, waggling her fist
for her funeral home fan, rocking as He knocks
her convicted heart, until the altar call,
which I haven’t good and finished
before she bounds from the wood floor and runs,
skips really since it’s only two steps, plunges
to her knees, arms up to bury her face
in the cedar-chest moaners’ bench, praying
the garbled-up pitiful pleas we’ve heard
only as music, as sounds torn from their meanings.
Then we know she’s saved because she jumps up screaming.
RCR05 is available at rabbitcatastrophe.blogspot.com, Morris
Bookshop (Lexington, KY), Prospero’s Books (Kansas City, MO), and Woodland Pattern
(Milwaukee, WI).