M. Spaeth: Exquisite Corpse

I stand with ripples
in the palm of my hand

Instructions: Comment on this post to add a few lines of your own to contribute to the poem. You can comment as few or as many times as you would like – whatever you prefer. When somebody feels that the poem has reached a good stopping place, then that person can end the poem by posting a comment that says “(end)”. By the end of the week, we will have produced a complete poem that is varied, interesting, and compelling.

There’s no pressure – the comments will not be subject to the submission process for our print issues. This is an open forum for a poetic conversation – and we want YOU to participate!

P. Lester: Books with Lives of Their Own

What happens in a bookstore after it closes:

Vol. 3, Issue 1

Cheers to the prospect of spending the holidays cozying up with this beautiful new issue of Fortnight! Paper copies have made their journeys across the college campus, humbly filling racks and awaiting new homes. This one comes with one tin can of beans, an elegantly draped coat, and a carefully set spring-loaded mousetrap.

Remember to continue submitting your poetry, prose, and artwork to us!

Warmth and scarves,
The Fortnight Staff

N. Nuechterlein: Interviews

Interviews with the people who got famous for the way they said things, 1950 and on: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

Letter from the Editors

Dear readers, writers, all idealists, cynics (and those in between and simultaneously neither and both), uncommitted wayfarers, and accidental guests,

The summer solstice was June 21st at 17:16, and since then Fortnight has seen a myriad of things — things that can only be accounted for by the stretching hours of daylight, bare limbs brushing the wind, the watery black tar mirages that, in the height of summer, accompanies roads meeting their vanishing points, and of course, the abandoned molts of cicadas dispersed on the planet. These things have been indelibly noted, stored, and allowed to ferment for 1.877 x 10^3 hours, during which, astonishing connections have been made and the act of forgetting has allowed fiction and wonder to seep through and invoke an entirely different beast.

We at Fortnight are humbly inviting you to scrawl these images and strings of words, feeling, color, numbers, textures into a piece that, in its literary and/or visual form, might with greater odds be accessible to the rest of the world. We are currently accepting submissions for our October 2011 issue, and would very much love for you to share with us anything you might have tucked away on a harddrive or is cycling quietly through your memories. In fact, we are publishing monthly from this very instant through to April, so should a constant stream of documentation and invention be your blessing and curse, submit weekly, daily, hourly*!

Additionally, for any students on campus interested in joining Fortnight for the 2011-2012 year, we welcome you to attend our mass meeting on Monday, September 12th at 7pm. We will be located in 3222 Angell Hall, where snacks and refreshments will be provided. Fortnight’s first meeting, in which staff introductions and orders of business will be conducted, is on Sunday, September 18th at 4pm in the basement of Ambrosia cafe (326 Maynard Street). We hope to see you soon!

Your Fortnight Editors

*Perhaps not hourly. Hyperbole intended to promote deeper sense of excitement.

The Staff Issue

Happy end of the school year to all University of Michigan students. While you are either celebrating the end of the year or stressing out over the exams, papers, and trauma that accompany this happy time, the Fortnight staff was working away to bring you some of the best stuff they have written and drawn. Don’t believe me? Take a look at our final issue, our magnum opus, our pièce de résistance: The Staff Issue.

H. Bicknell: Citrus Paradisi

I saw a single grapefruit (citrus paradisi) hanging off of a small tree in the temperate room at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens the other weekend and paused despite the abundance of more exotic specimens because, well, I’d never actually seen a grapefruit on a tree before. This particular tree was so spindly, and the fruit so fat that I wondered at the branch’s ability to support and the fruit’s ability to hold on. I proceeded, of course, to write a poem about the Garden of Eden, after which I felt a very pressing need to study botany.

A. Fang: A Disturbing Recipe

Serving: 1

Ingredients:
-  a beautiful virgin of noble birth
-  a gibbet
-  iron instruments
-  an oven
-  a knife

Directions:
Step One:
If you are from a noble family, make sure you check on virgin maiden relatives to see if they secretly worship God / Christianity. Note that due to the typical portrayal of virgin-martyrs, the selected maiden must be of noble birth, a virgin, and beautiful. This step is critical to the making of a good virgin-martyr.

Step Two:
In order to make virgin-martyrs the ultimate symbol of virginity and God’s power, the selected virgin has to be tortured in many inhumane ways.

H. Keusch: Snippets of Whitman

Please awe over these snippets from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and feel free to sigh dejectedly because you can’t write stuff like it.

“Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.“

“Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Breaking and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.”

Double Issue!

It has been a long time since we’ve published an issue. But, we have a good reason. We have a special issue which is better than any past issue. We combined two issues into one amazing, giant collection of poetry, prose, art, and stapled paper. It’s complicated, so enjoy our latest offerings. Also, fun fact: if you look up the word “double” on Google, you get a bunch of results related to firearms and rainbows. The internet is weird.