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AGNI

@agnimagazine.bsky.social

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Our avatar is the Vedic god of fire, our goal is literary combustion. A beacon for 50 years, shining brightly in print and online. bu.edu/agni [Art for AGNI 101 by Malak Mattar]

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AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 1d

This is how I spend my days: sitting in a chair, boots on, stays on, hair in pins, plying my needle as a bee plies the blossom: in and out, in and out. Wind me up and I mutter all the Holy Holies you wish.

~from "The Wild Child"
by Rikki Ducornet
AGNI 62

In those years when I bounded about on all fours, and on my elbows fled those I feared; when in those lucent days I scaled trees fast as a cat and sailed the treetops as the squirrels do, spreading…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 3d

Here is the fossil as a perfume. Here is a bone
picked clean and whittled into a tiny tall ship.
Here are magicians teaching secrets
to contortionists. Here is colored glass on fire.

~from "Ex Libris"
by Megan Harlan
AGNI Online

Here is the fossil as a perfume. Here is a bone picked clean and whittled into a tiny tall ship. Here are magicians teaching secrets to contortionists. Here is colored glass on fire. Here is love…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 5d

"Finally, I have become indifferent to nostalgia—that primary emotion of my first forty years for which George Michael’s 'Careless Whisper' and Sade’s 'Is It a Crime' were like anthems."

🔥NEW🔥 at AGNI Online: "On the Train" by Taije Silverman.

By some oversight there are still mostly fields between Bologna and Venice, intimately familiar to me after the eight years I spent translating Italian sonnets about farm implements and irrigation…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 7d

October rolls in the grass
spilling apples
from its lips

Hands riding in automobiles
pull at the sky

A lawyer wakes up
watches a woman walking
across her back lawn

Someone drifts to a kitchen faucet
bumps against spoons

~from "October"
by Alan Britt
AGNI 3

October rolls in the grass spilling apples from its lips Hands riding in automobiles pull at the sky A lawyer wakes up watches a woman walking across her back lawn Someone drifts to a kitchen faucet…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 9d

Amazed as windows, our eyes the wine-blue of water
with nothing under it, it’s all we can do to keep loving you,
rosy-fingered whatever, as we might an ice cube
bumper-carring on a scarred griddle iron.

~from "Rosy-Fingered Whatever"
by Chad Davidson
AGNI Online

Rosy-Fingered Whatever

Few things are as convincing as the Greek landscape when Dörpfeld explains it in the 1900 translation of The Odyssey. November—blood month—and dawn sprawling over its doily of cumulae like a lover…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 11d

sweet honey pink, down the side of his neck is what I do in the car. This is what I do with his racquet: unzip the cover, test the spring, push my skirt up my thigh with the metal handle.

~from "Running My Mouth"
by Sara McKinnon
AGNI Online

Running My Mouth

sweet honey pink, down the side of his neck is what I do in the car. This is what I do with his racquet: unzip the cover, test the spring, push my skirt up my thigh with the metal handle. It has to…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 13d

The daily shock of the almost death
persists too long in memory.
A near automobile accident, a step
back from the crumbling ledge of the odd cliff.

~from "In Defense of Los Angeles"
by Eachan Holloway
AGNI Online

In Defense of Los Angeles

The daily shock of the almost death persists too long in memory. A near automobile accident, a step back from the crumbling ledge of the odd cliff. The news will be there to inform you if I do not…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 14d

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Cécé's Cell Phone

I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

agnionline.bu.edu

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 14d

RSVP to the event here!
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Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin

The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

www.eventbrite.com

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 14d

TONIGHT! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 15d

Two rows of footprints lead to the door. This means her husband is not alone. Pine needles have fallen into the prints. This is a type of clock: maybe three needles fall per hour.

~from "Kiss a Robber"
by Magdalena Zyzak
AGNI 78

Two rows of footprints lead to the door. This means her husband is not alone. Pine needles have fallen into the prints. This is a type of clock: maybe three needles fall per hour. Ella walks in the…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 17d

Beach-plums by the bath-house drop.
Split in rippling heat. Collapse.
The island hasn’t seen a sheep
or a thief in a century.

~from "When You Ask Again"
by Miriam O’Neal
AGNI 50

When You Ask Again

From the dunes Penikese seems to drift on the horizon. Its dot of barracks empty, barns and sheepfold shut. Beach-plums by the bath-house drop. Split in rippling heat. Collapse. The island hasn’t…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 19d

It is in that moment of waiting for the opening of the door that the house takes shape, a promised gift in a Christmas package wrapped in colorful glittering ribbons—the kind of gift I never received as a child.

~from "Elegy for a Fabulous World"
by Alta Ifland
AGNI 66

Elegy for a Fabulous World

In my dreams their house always appears as if separated from the rest of the universe, with no surroundings, and I, equally remote from any connection to the present or future, standing on the front…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 21d

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Cécé's Cell Phone

I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

agnionline.bu.edu

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 21d

RSVP to the event here!
buff.ly/YVcSCIH

Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin

The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

www.eventbrite.com

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 21d

1 WEEK FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 23d

The serial-killer abstract-expressionist meets me on top of a steep, snow-covered mountain. It is all arranged.

~from "Five Serrated Dreams"
by Emily Mitchell
AGNI Online

Five Serrated Dreams

I. The serial-killer abstract-expressionist meets me on top of a steep, snow-covered mountain. It is all arranged. The killer’s method involves throwing his victims off the tops of mountains into…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 25d

Moaning is the minute
between dusk and dark, the first stars,
barely a breeze, a dead
armadillo drying by the road

~from "12 Lines After Leadbelly"
by Jason Labbe
AGNI Online

12 Lines After Leadbelly

Moaning is the minute between dusk and dark, the first stars, barely a breeze, a dead armadillo drying by the road, the day’s cotton picked, a blood-blistered finger, a blind man led across town by…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 27d

From AGNI Online

"Coogee to Bronte Walk"
by Judy Rowley

My favorite translation of coogee, which is said to have come from the Bidigal word koo-jah, is the smell of seaweed drying.

Coogee to Bronte Walk

My favorite translation of coogee, which is said to have come from the Bidigal word koo-jah, is the smell of seaweed drying. There are other Aboriginal translations, too, mainly about smell or…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 28d

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Cécé's Cell Phone

I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

agnionline.bu.edu

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 28d

RSVP to the event here!
buff.ly/YVcSCIH

Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin

The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

www.eventbrite.com

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 28d

2 WEEKS FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 29d

Two lovers talking on the phone, at night,
ear pressed to the receiver pressed to ear

for the half whispering voices that are clearer
for being quiet, even more intimate

somehow for being far away.

~from "Premonition"
by Alan Shapiro
AGNI 57

Two lovers talking on the phone, at night, ear pressed to the receiver pressed to ear for the half whispering voices that are clearer for being quiet, even more intimate somehow for being far away.…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · Sep 7

This is what Davis wanted: songs composed of improvised passages, where off-the-cuff solos, as much as ensembles or prepared themes, defined the composition.

~from "When It Was New: Miles Davis’s 'So What'"
by Aaron Gilbreath
AGNI Online

When It Was New: Miles Davis’s “So What”

Four weeks after first recording “So What,” on March 2nd, 1959, Miles Davis’s band recorded the song again in a Manhattan TV studio. Shot for a thirty-minute episode of CBS’s short-lived Roy Herridge…

AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · Sep 5

I study her hip bones, mid-day.
Something crackles through the trees—no, a withering.

I let the last malanga rot on the counter because it is easier
not to have to cut another thing open.

~from "Mal de Ojo"
by Leslie Sainz
AGNI 91

I study her hip bones, mid-day. Something crackles through the trees—no, a withering. I let the last malanga rot on the counter because it is easier not to have to cut another thing open. Bulls in my…