All articles filed in Protean Magazine

In this compact lyric, poet Shira Dentz reflects on the fundamental condition of capitalist modernity: “how things become people / & vice versa.”

Andrew Ketcham   The way his name suggests a wound. Ritualistic self mutilation. St. Sebastian. Penetration. Induced vomiting and martyrdom. Dentistry. Bleeding your mouth like nuclear pennies. How you roll it around. Sieve it between your teeth. Suck from it all tannins and meaning. Pierces your tendency to touch things you ought not. Fire cracker.…

Amid increasing state violence against workers and pueblos originarios in Peru, we present an excerpt from Peruvian poet Valeria Román Marroquín’s collection ANA C. BUENA (La Balanza Editorial, 2021), translated into English for the first time by Noah Mazer.

Poet Jake Romm’s “Lamentations” grieves the inadequacy of revolutionary poetry while maintaining the necessity of revolution: “A poem,” he writes, “is a failure / To fulfill the promise of poetry.”

Poet Kurt Ostrow’s “Minor Deities” infuses the nonhuman world with the spirit of emancipatory politics.

Sudip Bhattacharya’s poem “AAPI Month” asks us to remember, amid the pandemic’s enduring brutalities, the achievements of Vietnam’s anticolonial struggle.