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Protean Magazine

Protean Magazine

An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.

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  • Online Features
    • Critique & Essays
    • News Analysis
    • Poetry
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
    • Fiction
  • Store
    • Shop
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • Support Us
  • Submissions
  • About Us

Elegy for Archie (1948-2015)

By: Protean Magazine February 14, 2023
Poetry

In this gorgeous elegy for her “first no-hassle lover,” poet Joan Mazza reflects on desire as a mutual experiment, a test of “heat and pressure” unbound by marriage or monogamy.

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Poetry

Two Poems

By: Protean Magazine February 12, 2023
Poetry

Using declassified documents from the CIA’s MKUltra project, poet Patrick Blagrave explores the terrifying violence US imperialism wages upon its subjects.

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Poetry

Job Security

By: Protean Magazine February 7, 2023
Poetry

In “Job Security,” poet Umang Kalra twists the language of work around the present apocalypse, asking: “what does it mean to name / the thing / that will kill / you?”

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Poetry

RE: UPCOMING ACTIONS **CHANGE OF PLANS**

By: Protean Magazine February 4, 2023
Poetry

In “RE: UPCOMING ACTIONS **CHANGE OF PLANS**,” poet Tiffany Katz twists the unglamorous language of the email blast into an acidic critique of political complacency.

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Poetry

the speeches of the gods snail out

By: Protean Magazine February 3, 2023
Poetry

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

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Poetry

body modding at the Schaumburg Claire’s

By: Protean Magazine February 1, 2023
Poetry

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.…

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Poetry
A painted mural of industrial workers.

Degrowth is Anti-Capitalist

By: Protean Magazine January 15, 2023January 15, 2023
Critique & Essays

Energy researcher Nishikant Sheorey provides this primer on the field of degrowth: what it is, what it is not, and what its critics on the left get wrong. Far from being analogous to “austerity,” degrowth is instead deeply aligned with anti-capitalist values.

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Critique & Essays
Photo depicting workers and indigenous groups demonstrating against the right-wing Congress and military forces in Cusco, Peru.

ana contra la totalidad social: cuatro apuntes metodológicos / ana versus the social totality: four methodological sketches

By: Protean Magazine December 19, 2022December 19, 2022
Poetry

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.

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Poetry

Lamentations

By: Protean Magazine December 16, 2022December 16, 2022
Poetry

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.”

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Poetry

Minor Deities

By: Protean Magazine December 15, 2022
Poetry

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

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Poetry

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