TYGER QUARTERLY
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Issue 1: Spring 2022

  1. Serena Solin
  2. Toby Altman  
  3. S. Brook Corfman
  4. Katana Smith
  5. Natalee Cruz
  6. Emma Wilson
  7. Ashley Colley
  8. Colin Criss 
  9. Jack Chelgren
  10. Stefania Gomez 

Issue 2: Summer 2022
  1. Matthew Klane
  2. Ryan Nhu
  3. TR Brady
  4. Alana Solin
  5. K. Iver
  6. Emily Barton Altman
  7. William Youngblood
  8. Alex Wells Shapiro  
  9. Sasha Wiseman
  10. Yunkyo Moon-Kim


Issue 3: Fall 2022
  1. Sun Yung Shin
  2. Rosie Stockton
  3. Adele Elise Williams & Henry Goldkamp
  4. Noa Micaela Fields
  5. Miriam Moore-Keish
  6. Fred Schmalz
  7. Katy Hargett-Hsu
  8. Alicia Mountain
  9. Austin Miles
  10. Carlota Gamboa

  Birthday Presents
       for William Blake

    Five Words for William Blake
        on His 265th Birthday
            (after Jack Spicer)
 


Issue 4: Winter 2023

  1. MICHAEL CHANG 
  2. Daniel Borzutzky
  3. Alicia Wright
  4. Asha Futterman
  5. Ellen Boyette
  6. S Cearley
  7. Sebastián Páramo
  8. Abbey Frederick
  9. Caylin Capra-Thomas
  10. maryhope|whitehead|lee & Ryan Greene


Issue 5: Spring 2023

  1. Jose-Luis Moctezuma 
  2. Peter Leight
  3. Rachel Galvin
  4. Sophia Terazawa
  5. Katherine Gibbel
  6. Lloyd Wallace
  7. Timothy Ashley Leo
  8. Jessica Laser
  9. Kira Tucker
  10. Michael Martin Shea


Issue 6: Summer 2023

An Introduction to Tyger Quarterly’s The Neo-Surrealist Interview Series

1. Mary Jo Bang 
2. Marty Cain 
3. Dorothy Chan 
4. Aditi Machado 
5. Alicia Mountain
6. Serena Solin
7. Marty Riker 
8. Francesca Kritikos
9. Luther Hughes
10. Toby Altman

Bonus: William Blake Tells All


Issue 7: Fall 2023 


1. Dennis James Sweeney 
2. M. Cynthia Cheung
3. Nathaniel Rosenthalis
4. Reuben Gelley Newman
5. James Kelly Quigley 
6. Christine Kwon
7. Maxwell Rabb
8. Maura Pellettieri 
9. Patty Nash 
10. Alyssa Moore


Issue 8: Winter 2024
1. Julian Talamantez Brolaski
2. Elizabeth Marie Young
3. Michael Gardner 
4. Steffan Triplett 
5. Margaret Yapp
6. Chelsea Tadeyeske
7. June Wilson 
8. Dawn Angelicca Barcelona
9. Evan Williams 
10. Brendan Sherry 


Issue 9 + 10: Spring/Summer 2024
1. Emily Pittinos 
2. Lisa Low 
3. Binx Perino 
4. Kai Ihns
5. Alex Tretbar 
6. Joanie Cappetta 
7. Mike Bagwell
8. Kelly Clare
9. Antonio Vargas-Nieto 
10. Olivia Sio Tse 

//

11. Jackson Watson
12. Myka Kielbon
13. Henie Zhang
14. David Brennan
15. Ann Pedone
16. Maddy Chrisman-Miller
17. Ronnie Sirmans
18. Evan Goldstein
19. Anne Marie Rooney
20. Cameron Lovejoy


Issue 11: Fall 2024

Laocoön, at the top reads “Where any view of Money exists Art cannot be carried on but War only.” In this spirit of Blake, rather than putting out a new issue of poetry, the Tygers of Tyger Quarterly have put together links to writing, and other medias, that have figured as meaningful reading, writing, listening as we continue the fight to end Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.

1. My Palestinian Poem that “The New Yorker” Wouldn’t Publish by Fady Joudah (from LARB)
2. No Human Being Can Exist + No Human Being Can Exist by Saree Makdisi (from N+1)
3. Under the Jumbotron + William Blake’s ‘Laocoön’: Why this poet’s engraving reads like a protest poster” by Anahid Nersessian (from LRB + The Yale Review) 
4. On Israel and Lebanon: A Response to Adrienne Rich from One Black Woman by June Jordan (from New York War Crimes)
5. Genocide Leaves No Illusions in Tact by Yasmeen Daher (from Verso)
6. Can You Tell Us Why This Is Happening: Testimonies from Gaza (from N+1)
7. Landing: Skateboarding in Palestine by Maen Hammad (Bonus Documentary: Epicly Palestined: The Birth of Skateboarding in the West Bank) (from N+1 + SkatePal)
8. Palestine is Everywhere, and It Is Making Us More Free: More Letters from The Apocalypse by George Abraham and Sarah Aziza (from The Nation)
9. Liberation Pedagogy at the People’s University for Gaza by Amir Marshi (from MQR)
10. “We,” A Poem for Palestine by Ghayath Almadhoun (from Outlook India) 
11. Resources Towards a Free Palestine (from Mizna)
12. Crimes Against Language: The Moral Truth of Israel’s War Against Gaza is not Difficult to Grasp by Sarah Aziza (from The Baffler)
13. Israelism: The Awakening of Young American Jews dir.  Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen
14. [excerpt from Palestine (+100)] Editor’s Introduction by Basma Ghalayini +  “The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid” by Mazen Maarouf (translated by Jonathan Wright)
15. If I Must Die by Refaat Alareer (from In These Times)



Email: tyger quarterly @ gmail dot com 



©2022 TQ



Daniel Borzutzky







INSERT BODIES HERE



He gets in the way of a bullet

The city floods

He gets in the way of a bulldozer

The state groans

He gets in the way of a machine gun

He hears someone say

It’s none of your business how many people we must save from themselves

The highway is blocked

Supplies can’t get through

The city floods

He hears someone say

It’s your choice, you get to decide how much pain you want to feel

A building crumbles

A bed fills with blood

A voice says

You get to decide how much the tumor will grow

A girl starves

The lake overflows

The trucks can’t get through

No rice no bread no drinking water

A voice says

You get to decide how far you will fall

A soldier appears

He is also an artist

He talks to a journalist

I feel something “complex” about the human rights abuses I have committed

The journalist assumes he means the human rights abuses

      he committed in a third world shithole

But really he means

The human rights abuses he committed here in Chicago

A boat fills with refugees fleeing Illinois and Indiana

A boat fills with refugees trying to get to Canada

The water calms

The sun rises

A prison is built out of twigs and branches

It fills up with destitute immigrants

The artist-soldier shoots himself in the head, his best performance

No one watches

A police officer asks to see our papers

We only have toilet paper

You need to apologize for getting in the way of our bullets, he says

You need to stop letting us torture you

The police officer beats us a bit

You only have toilet paper and not even that can keep your asses clean

He laughs and beats us a bit

He asks for our numbers

No numbers

He asks for our names

No names

He asks if we can measure the economic impact of our bodies in Molotov cocktails

Windows shatter

Several dogs are reported as casualties

A poet appears on the scene

A vulture appears on the scene

The poet and vulture search for the form of the apocalypse

Why do you keep getting in the way of our bullets

The form mutates

Institutions dissolve

The town radiates, glows pleasantly

The mayor gets angry

The teachers lose their pensions

The land swallows some bodies

The prison is on fire

I am limited by my intuition

I am limited by my constitution

I am limited by my indiscretion

I am limited by my access to nuclear waste

The land explodes gently

The system breaks down then regenerates

A momentary sense of triumph

I see snakes on the road

A momentary sense of triumph

I see rabbits on the road

Bees return to the city

A child is struck in the head with a battery

The whole country flows out of a dead man’s mouth

Some babies are born

Refugees keep coming from Nebraska

The police want to know what color they are

The Nebraskans don’t know what color they are

The police officers guess what color they are

They look pinkish or mauve or ochre

Someone wants to interrogate their outer layers

A philanthropist has a suggestion

Maybe we can bury them in that pretty little hole?

Words keep appearing: disease, dehydration, hospitalization

A priest and a rabbi walk into Target

That’s no priest, that’s an alley

That’s no alley

That’s another child who needs to apologize for getting in the way of our bullets

The Bank of America bursts into flames

Money flows out of a dead man’s mouth

Insert bodies here







SECRET CODE #306


A  drunk  poet  in  the  audience  heckles  me     You’re not
as good as Artaud
    he yells    You’ll never be as good as
Artaud



He  apologizes  after  the  reading  and  asks  me  if  I  like
Artaud  


I  tell  him  my  opinions  about  Artaud  and  he  suggests
we  meet  for  coffee



The  headline  of  the  article  reads  “Chicago poet seized
as fugitive killer”


She kisses me and says    I only like you for your exchange
value    no one cares about your use value


The  fugitive  poet  didn’t  appear  to  have  a  violent  side   
he  was  an  anti-war  activist  and  everyone  thought  he
was  funny


When  I   was  younger         I   was   taught   that  curiosity
about    the    secret   code    would    inevitably    lead    to
catastrophe


They   say   you   can   only   understand   your   own   body
after   you   have   understood   the   bodies   of   others


The  boys  have  a  problem        their fathers        they want
to  solve  the  problem  by  killing them


I only use punctuation to convey confusion? or enthusiasm!


All  the   words  make    sense         I   understand   the   text     
the  subtext        the  connotations       the  metaphors     the
references   and   allusions        but   in   the end  I  have  no
idea what any of it actually means


I  ask  her  for  her  password  and  she  whispers  in  my  ear
Bearwolf43!


When  he  was  a  child   he   believed   he   could   change a
thing by looking at it


If I don’t see it does it actually exist?


I    spent     two    years    writing    a    poem    called    “The
Destruction   of   the   Global   Economy”        It’s   about   a
bank  that  has  so  much  money  it  actually has no money
at  all         It’s   about   a  man  who  buys   100  houses  and
sells   them   for   125%   profit       It’s    about   the   way   in
which   the  bank   loans  money  to   both   the   man   who
sells  the  houses  and   the  people  who  buy  the   houses
and  when   the   people   who   buy   the   houses   can   no
longer   afford   their   loans   the   bank   sells   the   houses
back   to   the   man   who   buys   the houses  and  he  sells
them   again   to   people   who  cannot  afford  the  houses


( Insert    analogy   about        the   push   and   pull   of   the
broken  body )


I  thought  it  was  a  good  poem  but  I’ve  never  shown it
to anyone and  now  it sounds  stale  and  outdated


In   my   head  I   say  over  and   over   again.   Bearwolf43!    
but   when  it  comes   time  to  type  in  the  password  the
animals have escaped me      Beowulf43!      Baywatch43!


It’s not a bad idea to learn how to build a ventilator


I  want  to  believe   that  if  I  look   at  the   television   long
enough I might change the outcome of the game


My  father  calls   with  an   urgent  message:     the  market
doesn’t care about your feelings!


You  can   begin  a   sentence  in   the   middle   of   another
sentence in order to make a new sentence  


Care about your feelings!    


You  can   write   the  sentence   as   if  the   subject   were
implied or you can write the sentence as a question    


It doesn’t care about your feelings!    Doesn’t it care about
your feelings?


I  ask   about  the   secret  code  and   she  tells  me  it’s  an
everchanging  set  of  unarticulated  knowledge  that  I  am
too  uncouth  to  access


You   can   take   classes   on   etiquette     you   can   hire  a 
professional   to   manage   your   skin   care   and   hygiene   
you  can   subscribe   to  a  service   that  buys  clothes   for
you


I  own six  pairs of  jeans  but  I wear  the  same  ones  every
day


The   man   who   builds  100  houses  says       Some people
call  me  a  successful  entrepreneur        Others  call  me  a
capitalist scumbag pig    It all depends
    he says     On the
words you like to use to describe your relationship to living


I  can’t   focus  on   the  movie  because   I  keep  thinking  of
snappy   responses   I  could  have   said  to  the   poet   who
tells  me I will  never be as  good as  Artaud


I’m sick of being alive but I’m too afraid to die


(is it okay if I tell you this?)


You    can   look    into   the   sky   and    see   a   thread    that
connects your body to the stars and the planets


I  don’t  know   what  that  means     but  I  suspect  it   might
be  true


What is the name of that tree?







Biographical Statement


Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and translator in Chicago. His most recent book is "Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018." His 2016 collection, "The Performance of Becoming Human" received the National Book Award. "Lake Michigan" (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translation is Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s "The Loose Pearl" (2022). His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's "Valdivia" received the 2017 National Translation Award and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita and Jaime Luis Huenún. He teaches English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.