Hey there, so we are writing with good news, which is that the new issue of DIAGRAM is online for you! Find it here at http://thediagram.com/25_2.
Before we get to that cool info, a quick reminder that the 2025 Chapbook Contest Deadline is coming up in less than 2 weeks. Click for more info. This is how we acquire most of our yearly chapbooks, so don't sleep on it. Entering also helps support New Michigan Press and the ongoing work of DIAGRAM, which remains free to read and free to submit to for more than 25 years.
But enough about commerce. You also pay us with your attention, so let's give it to issue 25.2: The new issue includes:
TEXT / IMAGE: Zaid Aldarghme, John Arthur, Andre Bagoo, Nathaniel Calhoun, Kinsey Cantrell, Douglas Cole, Katharine Coles, Grace Ezra, Olivia Garard, Kevin Grauke, Dan Gutstein, Harrison Hamm, Seth Landman, Angie Macri, Oli Peters, Glenn Shaheen, Abraham Smith, Sidney Tilghman, Catherine Weiss, Adele Elise Williams, Burgi Zenhaeusern, Katherine Zlabek.
REVIEWS:
Crystal Odelle on Safa Khatib, Olga Mikolaivna on Olivia Milberg (trans. Cameron Lovejoy), Jodie Noel Vinson on Emily Wells.
SCHEMATICA:
Basic Elements of A. C. Servomechanism, Intervention, A Simple Economic Control System, Two-Dimensional Plot of 10 Universes of Motivations for Becoming a Teacher by Mori's Results.
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So this is a first from us. In the new issue you'll find a story, Sidney Tilghman's DOG MOM, which was submitted to us and that we published AS A T-SHIRT.
It reads DOG MOM on the front and has the full text of the story on the back. Of course we also published the story text as is, but the real way to read this story is to freaking wear it. You can do so here.
Or, fine, you can read the story on its own if you want to:
DOG MOM by Sidney Tilghman
She hadn't expected puppies. "Twins," the technician told her, pointing to the pair of stars blinking back from the screen. At her next appointment, a constellation appeared: nine heartbeats where there had been two, she half-expected to see a moon hanging among the delicate swirls of spines and skulls. "Huh," her doctor said. Soon after, the panting began. It seemed her tongue, an appendage she often forgot except when burnt or bitten, lengthened several inches overnight. Despite her efforts, it lolled out of the container of her mouth, escaped her lips and teeth, dangled willy-nilly. "Put that thing away," a stranger said in line at the store. "Stop it," her friends chastised. It took all she had not to lean across tables and lick clean the fingers and plates of her companions. Rebuked, she snarled. She didn't crave one particular thing, but all things: the picked over bones of rotisserie chicken, the puckered ends of sausage casings, peanut butter, cheese, sticks, grass. She grew taut with life. When the time came, she pushed aside her bed. Made space where there wasn't any before. Paced her room. She yo-yoed between worlds. In graduate school, she had read a book, erudite and elusive (dense, really) wherein the writer, a pioneer of "auto-theory," described the vexing business of labor. Vexing. That was the word. How else to describe this sensation and the slippery daisy chain of puppy-placenta-puppy-placenta that followed? What better adjective for the way her tongue, fully autonomous now, went to work on the slicks of their warm, throbbing bodies? What marvels, she marveled when the last of her litter arrived, counting them over and over as they piled together, blindly searching for her leaking breasts. What marvels, she marveled, noticing, for the first time, freckles of color on their white fur, black ticking fading to brown like a mind changing course.
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You may also notice on that list of shirts you'll find a new one we made for a new narrative video game we're into, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage. It's a super dreamy narrative game set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in 1995 and 2022, so near and dear to our editor-in-chief's heart, and the game features a soundtrack with new music from 3/4 of DIAGRAM favorite The Chromatics, so it's giving the freaking vibes. Go give it a play if you play games.
Our other newest shirt is here, based on an image we found in a 1969 Arizona Citrus Cookbook:
Pick one up if you're in the mood. A few more hats for 2025, too:
https://thediagram.com/merch. Show your love for dear DEI and Hateration.
We will have some more fun news for you soon, but until then just enjoy the new issue!
So here we go. Looking forward to reading what you send us, as always!
Ander
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