In this 25th issue of Waccamaw, our contributors dreamt. They dreamt of bones “rewritten and rescripted and then reburied with dirt and snow and sweat,” of electrical storms in a grandfather’s heart, of our house illuminated with gaslight, and of nestlings born too soon under winter’s sky. They dreamt Johnny Cash singing, “I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way,” as stars burn out and fall. But they found more than bitter moments and afternoons near the end. They remembered a shared cigarette after a devastating tornado, acknowledged hate and love for a father, half dream and half ghost.
Pandemic-deep in Zoom meetings, we dreamed up an issue for a devastating year that demanded new images and new voices.

Issue 25

Self Portrait: Crumpled

All the dictionary                           is erased—          palimpset
                                  pulpy                                                                                                      remembering
You are not a title page
                                                                    not the index          of your             skin            you are the falling autumn
        already buried by the snow.

Generational Trauma

After carrying the weight of all this damage                                  for over thirty years, I wanted to be rid of it.                                  And not just the smell of it—all of it.                                                                   To remove it from my body like a malignant                                  growth or parasite. To deposit it in into                                  something: a jar, a forgotten account,                                                                   someone else’s body. To throw the shame                                  away. Into the trash. Into the ocean. Into a fire.                                  To archive the pain like slave schedules or                                                                   census records that no longer spoke of my                                  existence. This poem is a scar that reveals the                                 …

I just had the weirdest dream

This poem contains lines in Yiddish, with rough translations before and phonetic translations after. i. I just had the weirdest dream: We were strangers in the land of egypt.                   Fremde zenen mir geven in land mitsrayim                                     Hemmed lines in our hands gave way to mime and we mouthed a thousand languages – babel’s tatters gestured at our calloused feet. Each brick was a tongue,                   Yeder tsigl iz geven a tsung.                                     Friends at seder gummed their tile song, made mortar in their mouths to pave paths between wayward tribes. ii. I just had the weirdest dream. Our tonsils were the sand of the Sinai and our lungs were made of dust                   un undzere lungen zenen geven fun shtoyb;                                     we wetted tongues with wine to mend our voices delirious for want of water. The blessings that we coughed                   Di brokhes vos mir flegn hustn                                     Dust-ridden and bronchitis-stricken pleaded with the sky for deliverance in Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish and Bukhari.…

Coloured Boys in the Suburbs Are a Novelty

On a sweltering Tuesday, me and Dylan pack into my beat up minivan and bump our stereo damn near to its limits, pushing out Lupe…

Storms

Hailstorm We sat on the front porch early that morning, right as the sun should’ve risen, listening to ping-pong balls of hail pound against the…

Portrait of the Author as a Field Guide Entry

Habitat: Thinks of somewhere she isn’t— if it’s Alaska, yearns for Spain or Texas; If it’s Cuba, wishes herself on the subway headed to the…

Buck

My father, Buck, was a quick-tempered, mean son of a bitch who, at age 53, shot and killed a man in a bar back home…

Vivisection

I found the creature in the middle of my lawn on the day that Ellie came home. I had no idea what type of animal…

Pound

One afternoon near the end, before                the move, we walk the green by the mall and stop at the water wall, ever-raining monolith                amid the…

Editorial Team
Managing Editor: Veronica Good
Assistant Managing Editor: Sierra Windham
Copyeditor: Rose Pleasant
Assistant Fiction Editor: Alyssa Conner
Assistant Fiction Editor: Jeremiah Johnson
Nonfiction Editor: Victor Cocco
Assistant Nonfiction Editor: Molly Johnson
Assistant Nonfiction Editor: Colin Katchmar
Poetry Editor: Olivia Dimatteo
Assistant Poetry Editor: Selena Mendoza
Assistant Poetry Editor: Andrew Hadaway
Special Projects Editor: Hope Smith

Faculty Editors
Editor-in-Chief: Colin Foote Burch
Digital Content Coordinator: Alli Crandell
Fiction Editor: Jeremy Griffin
Nonfiction Editor: Lane Osborne