Issue 166

Summer & Fall 2024

EDITOR’S NOTE
Welcome to Issue 166 of TriQuarterly, curated with care by our fantastic team of readers and genre editors. The writers and multi-disciplinary artists found in this issue tackle a vast range of scopes, themes, moods, energies, forms, and approaches to language. It’s always a special challenge to come up with patterns and words that unite them all, but I think that’s an ultimately good thing.
This issue is expansive; it inhales and exhales. Strangeness lurks in unexpected places, taking the shape of a baby gator or a red jar or a proselytizing billboard.
Thank you to the TriQuarterly genre editors — Patrick Bernhard, Jennifer Companik, Emily Mirengoff, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, Starr Davis, Daniel Fliegel, and Sarah Minor — and to my assistant managing editor Kira Tucker for all the work you’ve put into curating this issue, and thank you to our readers. A lot of hands touch every issue of TriQuarterly, yielding a kaleidoscope of stories.
As always, my recommendation is to choose your own adventure when it comes to the order in which you read these pieces. Jump between genres. See what the kaleidoscope reveals.
– Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Image from we pilot the blood by Quenton Baker

Krista Diamond 7/15/24 Krista Diamond 7/15/24

Laguna

We called it Julaugust. That bruisingly hot stretch of weeks between mid July and late August, when after a month of summer vacation, more days lay ahead somehow.

Lee Upton 7/15/24 Lee Upton 7/15/24

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

The woman hailing a taxi in the rain
who is almost crushed by another taxi

KP Kaszubowski 7/15/24 KP Kaszubowski 7/15/24

Predictive Text

Andrew Grace 7/15/24 Andrew Grace 7/15/24

Double Surgeon’s Knot

When I tie one nearly invisible fishing line
to another nearly invisible fishing line

Meg Kim 7/15/24 Meg Kim 7/15/24

Torrance

The Santa Anas tug at my auntie’s hair,
thirsting as land thirsts.

Andrew Grace 7/15/24 Andrew Grace 7/15/24

Harsh Bit

It’s practically Spanish moss,
all of the fishing line dangling
from this tree.

Sabahattin Ali, translated by Aysel K. Basci 7/15/24 Sabahattin Ali, translated by Aysel K. Basci 7/15/24

The Dog

It was a very hot summer day.

Juana Bignozzi, translated by Anayvelyse Allen 7/15/24 Juana Bignozzi, translated by Anayvelyse Allen 7/15/24

while my colleagues write the great verses of Argentine poetry

i boil romano beans

Matt Barrett 7/15/24 Matt Barrett 7/15/24

Mrs. Bird

We knew nothing about Mrs. Bird except for two small things: She didn’t believe in God and she liked to walk alone.

William Archila 7/15/24 William Archila 7/15/24

We Were All Born Half-Dead

We were all born half-dead in 1932, said Roque Dalton, half-alive.

Quenton Baker 7/15/24 Quenton Baker 7/15/24

we pilot the blood

Yehoshua November 7/15/24 Yehoshua November 7/15/24

What About the Here and Now?

“When you die, you will meet God,”
reads the billboard
foregrounding the stretch of industrial factories
off the state highway
on my commute home each night.

William Archila 7/15/24 William Archila 7/15/24

What Did Cipitio Say?

Philosophers bore me? Even Cardinals hate me?

Hannah Baker Saltmarsh 7/15/24 Hannah Baker Saltmarsh 7/15/24

Why a Kansan is Burning His Own Field

A shorn grass edge talks down but you can’t talk down
a blazing pasture. Now, gasoline crackles rainbows over wheat stubble.

Issue 166

Summer & Fall 2024

About this issue