Gone Lawn – Autumn 2013

Gone Lawn is a journal that aims to publish “innovative, nontraditional and/or daring works, both narrative and poetic, that walk the difficult landscapes and break up the safe ones, works which incite surprising and unexpected feelings and thoughts.” Read one piece, heck, just look at the art in the issue, and you’ll see they are succeeding in their goals.

Gone Lawn is a journal that aims to publish “innovative, nontraditional and/or daring works, both narrative and poetic, that walk the difficult landscapes and break up the safe ones, works which incite surprising and unexpected feelings and thoughts.” Read one piece, heck, just look at the art in the issue, and you’ll see they are succeeding in their goals.

Simon Rogghe’s “Split” is surreal and haunting. The imagery and description is spot-on, with inventive ways to create an eerie atmosphere: “I pressed my hands against the window: cold, indifferent, a barrier between the living and the dead,” and, “It sang. It sang its acrid hymn. It screeched an aria that cut through its own skin. It waxed. It sharpened.”

Zoltán Komor’s piece, in which the women of the village go out in the middle of the night to behead the chickens and screw light bulbs into their bodies for light, is about the females of this village wanting to show the men the true light and beauty that they have. The little girl dreams of the day when she can make the light, and she says, “It will be just perfect light for him to really see me.”

Rory Fleming’s “Gloams” is capturing as the narrator sinks into the ocean to let the Gloams enter her through her mouth:

. . . a Gloam, shining fish of struggle, with slits down the length of its body, oscillating like gills. I opened my mouth whole to allow the salty liquid of the ocean to sift through my body as a gold pan. The Gloam entered inside me. I felt myself grow stronger.

Almost every piece in this issue feels like walking through someone else’s dream. With artistic language and strong description, this journal is one to get lost in, in the best sense of being lost.
[journal.gonelawn.net]