Destination Unknown
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In this issue, Victoria Buitron learns that the sounds you hear in the night may not be what you imagine in “Sextonic Plates.”
Jeff Hardin lifts his face and sings off key in two poems beginning with “Without One Plea.”
And, in “Destination Unknown” — a lush, elegant, and heartbreaking story, Khanh Ha brings strangers together on a boat. Through their conversations, along with the myna (the talking bird), we learn about the protagonist’s consequential decisions, driven by love, to help a woman in an impossible situation. Ha’s forthcoming short story collection, All the Rivers Flow into the Sea, will be released in June 2022 by EastOver Press.
This issue features images from a catalogue distributed by a gymnastics equipment company and reproduced in a book published by Dr. Alfred Levertin on Dr. G. Zander’s Medico-Mechanische Gymastik (1892). Aside from the shock of seeing the gymgoers’ choice of athletic wear, there is something uncanny about the lack of exertion displayed on Zander’s patients’ faces.
These images come from a catalogue distributed by “Görransson’s mekaniska verkstad”, a gymnastics equipment company, and are reproduced in a book published by Dr. Alfred Levertin on Dr. G. Zander’s Medico-Mechanische Gymnastik (1892). Aside from the shock of seeing the gymgoers’ choice of athletic wear (thick three-piece suits with pocket watches affixed on chains), there is something uncanny about the marked lack of exertion displayed on Zander’s patients’ faces. Zander’s technology was marketed as a passive activity — with some devices even driven by steam, gasoline, or electricity. All one had to do was connect their body to the machine and it would do the work for them. . . or so they were told.
From Public Domain Review: publicdomainreview.org/collection/zander-gym.
For more on Zander, see the article by Carolyn de la Pena at www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/29/pena.php
