Click through to read the full review of SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375, the twenty-eighth in this full-press review of Calamari books.

SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375 is:

Blake Butler, Matthew Simmons, Minju Pak, Girija Tropp, Deb Olin Unferth, Amira Hanafi, Annie Clarkson, Salvatore Difalco, Terese Svoboda, Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Jesse Reno, Pedro Ponce, J. Asher Lynch, Tim Horvath, Andrew Richmond, Jackson Taylor, Rogelio Ramos Signes, Toshiya Kamei, Julia Otxoa, Chris Lawson, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Rob Walsh, Samuel Ligon, Eva Talmadge, Joris Vanpoucke, Oliver Rohe, Laird Hunt, James Wagner, Peter Conners, Kevin Sampsell, Ron Klassnik, Jason Porter, Robert Darry, Labrini Yassine, Cal Freeman, Rosana Fernandez, Sara Veglahn, J’Lyn Chapman, Erik Anderson, David Alexander McFarland, Peter Markus, Adam Golaski, Forrest Roth, Debra Di Blasi, duncan barlow, Daniel Borzutzky, Elizabeth Albert, & an interview with Gary Lutz.

I could probably stop there right? I mean, anyone in the indie lit scene today knows at least half of these people, and knows them presumably in a pretty grand way – these are writers who we connect with, admire, write with, for, around – these are writers who mean a great deal to our collective literary consciousness. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Are these authors more famous / infamous because they appeared in SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375? Probably not. But are they a bit more renowned for having their work appear in an issue of SLEEPINGFISH? Most definitely. The entire SLEEPINGFISH line is a testament to new works and new words and tremendous writers and stellar editing and SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375 is a another large piece of evidence.

from Andrew Richmond’s ‘The Divorcing Town’:

The Hanging Town

Everyone in this town hangs always by the neck. Anyone walking through this town does not know what for. All anyone can assume is that those hanging took their own life before disease took them first. Though we are uncertain what disease for, we understand there must be so many.

The Pedantic Town

In this town nobody eats. They do not spend money. It is pleasurable. It is not bliss.

from Samuel Ligon’s ‘American League’:

Skinny stupid ghost boys smoking joints down the Kennedy in July after graduation let-freedom-ring night on their way to drink beer and shower in Comiskey’s bleachers with all the other drunk American League fans, most of them knowing where they belong or where they’re from, most of them from the south or southwest sides, not so many north shore or northwest suburban boys who belong at Wrigley, but no night games at Wrigley, no shower at Wrigley, no projects outside Wrigley, now on the Ryan, not Kennedy, the roads turning into each other somewhere

from Forrest Roth’s ‘No Eyes’:

Black black fur rise up eyes not soft. Bury eyes black. See black rise night. Think not hurt. Think not hurt. No not sleep. Fall rise night. See faces no eyes. Faces rise night now know. Grin tongue out. No eyes black out. No eyes black not rise not fall. Not see. Not see animal. Walk far no help. Help far on path. Warm fur black faces say fire. Say hurt. Say hurt. Say look.

SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375 is a triumph of collected fresh words, new ways to envision sentences. Even the last piece of the issue, an interview with Gary Lutz that is actually a game of word-association with Lutz’ ‘off-the-cuff responses’, begs us to want more from language, and we do, once we have read something like SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375.

Want more from this issue? Click the links in the opening contributor listing paragraph and you’ll get another round of work from this volume. Or you can hold this loveliness in your hands, as copies of SLEEPINGFISH 0.9375 can still be (and should be) had here.

Next up: 3^RD BED [5], VAAST BIN, & 3^RD BED [6].

Ta da (picture jazz hands).