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Climbing inside a painting to reach the dead | Matthew Buxton

Published 4 days ago • 1 min read

A short note today to share that we're entering the final week for two of our literary contests. You can read more details for the Bob Hicok Fellowship here and the Strange Pilgrims Prize here. Or just click below to submit! All entries come with a complimentary paid membership.

$2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship

A yearlong invitation for all poets, everywhere + educational & editorial opportunities

★

$3000 Strange Pilgrims Prize

Awarding the Story of the Year & Essay of the Year + partnership with Curtis Brown Literary Agency

★

Matthew Buxton

Matthew Buxton is a queer writer originally from Salt Lake City. He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, and his work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Copper Nickel, The Iowa Review, Chicago Review, and more. He's been recognized by the Vermont Studio Center, McCormack Writing Center, the Fine Arts Work Center, among others. He now lives in Chicago.

from The True Painting of the “Isle of the Dead” by Arnold Böcklin at the Hour of the Angelus

at the same speed as him
so it looked like it was
levitating——
levitating——
the two, together, until
the bird impaled the woman with its gleaming thorn
making them one and the boy did not know
what this was called so he called it rape.

The Great Bukkake of My Mortality

On humor, elegy, and ekphrasis

What’s real, in the surreality of existing in this time, is my life and my death. My loved one’s lives and their deaths. We get to decide how to live, how to love, how to grieve.

ON, Canada
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