Staff Recs
The team at No Contact recommends their favorite pieces from the past year.
Akhim Alexis Recommends “Pigeon Meditations” by Rachel Kuanneng Lee
This poem is a powerful wreckoning amplified by stirring imagery and measured tone. The journey “Pigeon Meditations” takes you on is unique. It's a careful meditation on pain and what it means to be human. I promise you'll never look at a pigeon the same way ever again. Read here.
Elliot Alpern Recommends “Never Little, Never Grown” by Brian Evenson
The first time I read “Never Little, Never Grown”, I couldn’t help but think to myself — “I’m reading a Brian Evenson story that nobody’s seen yet. I’m reading a Brian Evenson story that nobody’s seen yet!” And what a fantastic Evenson piece — a clearly defined yet alien setting which breathes such a tone of isolation. Really, this is a story that grapples with being left by one’s self, finally, and then the ensuing struggle of juxtaposing that “before” with a sense of stasis, an acceptance of normalcy in being alone. It’s a beautiful work of loss, empathy and caring for one’s “family”, if “family” is the right word here. Above all, it so purely proves that, sometimes, the best way to examine our human nature is to remove perspective, and pull it away from the “human”. Here, such a maneuver works flawlessly, with a sense of doubt, or perhaps inquisitiveness, wrapped into the narrator’s own core neutrality. One of Evenson’s best, and I don’t say that lightly. Read here.
Michael Aurelio Recommends “Missouri I Hope I Never See You Again” by Damian Rucci
Damian Rucci’s “Missouri I Hope I Never See You Again” reads like a curse you would mutter waking up in the back of a truck with a 10-pound hangover. But with each line, the poem moves further into detailing the most intimate destruction that American disparity leaves in its wake. Rucci is no casual observer to this, and with a worn honesty reveals that he is losing the lighter parts of himself with each line—brutally surmising that “I may never see him again.” The last segment is the most haunting “From the rear view mirror I watch my neighbor fight an invisible foe.” and makes me think of my own small mountain town that I put in the rear view many years ago and the survivor's guilt of leaving a burning building while others may still be trapped inside. Read here.
Nathaniel Berry Recommends “Snow Day” by Kathryn Kulpa
“No work for me! No work for you!” ran through my head last winter, when I recalled Katherine Kulpa’s extraordinary “Snow Day” on a morning when a rare desert snow storm made the badlands of New Mexico fresh and strange. My partner and I had lots of lonely, writerly computer work to do and we blew it all off on Kulpa’s advice: dug a bottle out of the trunk and spent the day watching the snow fall. “Snow Day” feels like a little refuge, and it’s the hallmark of truly excellent writing when a short piece captures something as well-trodden as inclement weather in a way that feels familiar simultaneously, excitedly fresh as new snowfall. I know I’ll recall Kulpa’s writing every time the winter weather gives me an excuse to “slipper-skate” through the kind of cozy day you wish could endure through the rest of your life. Read here.
Teal Fitzpatrick Recommends “Hong Van” and “Hammock” by K-Ming Chang
K-Ming Chang is a generous writer – prolific, curious, and assured. In these companion flash pieces, Hong Van / Hammock, her generosity presents itself in the overflow of her narrators’ memory and reverie. Each of her speakers invites and immerses the reader into rich pasts, whole pasts, pasts that recall joy and violence equally, pasts that mourn what has been lost and desperately conjure what is still missed. In Hong Van / Hammock, memory exists as mosaic, and the strange, haunting, and sensual details of these pieces are lovely on their own, and dazzle as a whole. Read here.
Rachel A.G. Gilman Recommends “Disordered Bodies” by Jack Balderrama Morley
Reading this felt like having taken advantage of PornHub's free premium content in the early days of the pandemic without having to muddy up my Internet search history, but also where the goal is a good laugh and not a subpar orgasm. During a year starved of intimacy, Morley combs through all the supposed fantasies on fullscreen display: remembering the joy of an hour's worth of toe-sucking; wondering if the guy masturbating in the woods appreciates all the variety of plants around him; workshopping the title "Gang bang in my parents' laundry room" for its factual inaccuracies. The observations are brilliant, but even more so is the realization that all the narrator wants is to be close to someone in a way that's just been impossible. I'm not sure if I'm horny or heartbroken, but I am definitely here for it. Read here.
M.M. Kaufman Recommends “Bedside Manor” by Hilary Leichter
Leichter is masterful at creating mood. The quirky and mysterious narrator uses descriptive language to weave a magical reality I wanted to live in for a while. The cadence is poetic and the images are surreal. Also, after a year on the couch, I loved the idea of re-imagining the quarantine experience in a fantastical, dark fairy tale way. And what a lovely ending line. Read here.
Benjamin Pfeiffer “The Fable of the Footless Man” by Michael X. Wang
Fables might be the purest form of storytelling and the hardest to write. They allow and celebrate things you don't see in the MFA workshop-dominated literary scene: strange turns, flat characters, abrupt endings, and unsettling conclusions. I had trouble picking a piece for No Contact's 'Best of' list, because there were a lot of incredible stories, poems, and essays to choose from, but Michael's fable stuck to me and wouldn't let me go. He's an incredible writer and I can't wait to read his novel Lost in the Long March. Read here.
Suzanne Richardson Recommends “Drakkar Noir” and “Nobody’s Eyes But Mine” by Michael Chang
Just when you think you’ve figured the logic of Michael Chang’s poetry, it takes you somewhere novel. Some of the pleasure in the work is that it sets its own rules and then promptly breaks them. This allows for multiple moments in a poem. Most poems have one moment, this work gives you six or seven. Chang’s poems are us, dramatic, big enough to hold cultural references, vulnerability, humor, anger, despair, and desire. Their polyphonic nature allows for multiple entrances to the work. These poems are in one moment hard critique, and the next, an embrace; a wink after a spanking. Read here.
Paul Ruta Recommends “Goji” by Joy Guo
When I became a No Contact reader in January 2021, “Goji” by Joy Guo was in the first batch of stories I was assigned. I love this job already, I thought. While I also love the more abstract, out-there work that appears in the magazine, I have a special fondness for “Goji”. It packs a lot of warmth and human insight into a thousand words, confirming my suspicion that sometimes the best story is a story that tells a damn story. Read here.
Gauraa Shekhar Recommends “Rebooting How I Met Your Mother for the 2020-2021 Network TV Season”
I spent a good chunk of the last year rewatching old sitcoms. I watched until my eyes got bleary from sleep. I kept them on in the background while I chipped away at mundane tasks. It was soothing at first—the sound of friendly chatter at bars and coffee shops. I felt less lonely. But after a while, the laughter track took on a more sinister tone. I began to feel hectored by it. There was a world of difference between the lives on my TV set and mine in isolation. The disembodied studio audience knew it. They were laughing at me for it. Chris Vanjonack’s “Rebooting How I Met Your Mother for the 2020-2021 Network TV Season” perfectly captures this dissonance, elevating every episodic punchline to stark catharsis. Robin declines Ted’s invitation to go back to his apartment because he’s not taking social distancing seriously enough. Barney attempts to end a relationship he unknowingly started with a cop. Robin drunkenly releases her five dogs into the streets of Brooklyn—how can I ever stop thinking about this? Read here.
Jemimah Wei Recommends “Pounce” by Jo Withers
What can I say—this piece is excellent. The experimental, multiple choice format not only keeps the structure heartbreakingly light for its subject matter, it also complements the school setting perfectly. The prose is tightly, expertly woven without losing any of its heart, and the dash of bizarreness with the roving lion elevates this piece from wonderful to pure magic. I am in awe! Read here.
