Issue 9: Anatomy of Purpose
Cover art: “Melancolía 2” by Sekinat Oladeji
Editor’s Letter
Dear readers,
Welcome to Issue 9 of Heimat Review.
By now, spring is fully unfurled—branches no longer tentative, light growing louder by the day. And yet, we open this issue not in bloom, but in stark contrast. For the first time, we begin with the body laid bare, in both the literal and emotional sense: a cadaver on a medical table, a woman hosting a face not her own. It’s a bold, unflinching entry into themes that have always stirred at the edges of our publication, but which take center stage here: personhood, memory, visibility, and the blurred line between reverence and detachment.
Much of this issue lingers in those liminal spaces—between being seen and remaining unseen, between what is remembered and what fades, between presence as a physical fact and as a quiet, emotional echo. In Anatomy of Presence, we ask how the self is shaped—by the touch of grief, by the absence of language, by the intimacy of place, or by the residue of what others leave behind.
Throughout these pages, you’ll find chiaroscuro—the stark contrasts of light and dark, stillness and disruption. A phone call both connects and deceives. A sachet of dried herbs holds a scent long gone. A porch becomes a reliquary. Even the cover image invites us to consider what we reveal and what we conceal in monochrome.
Normally, we lead with softness—a poetic meditation that eases readers in. But this issue asked for something different. It lives in thresholds: between self and other, past and present, wholeness and fracture. Again and again, these pieces ask: what remains when we are no longer seen clearly? What part of us survives being forgotten, renamed, misremembered? This is the first issue of Heimat Review that opens not with wonder, but with reckoning.
The pieces in the first section, “To Begin With the Body,” are unapologetically raw entries—emotional autopsies in their own right.“Dissection” enters the body with equal parts awe and guilt, and “Cerberus” disturbs with its commodification of identity and autonomy, which leads to the later “Naming Animals” drawing a throughline from childhood gentleness to adult survival. We begin here because these pieces demand it—not with noise, but with presence. They don’t gradually pull you in; they meet your gaze directly, asking to be seen and remembered. Much of this issue responds to that prompt: what parts of us are preserved, and which are lost to time, silence, or the ways we’ve left them?
In “Learning to Read Yiddish for Holocaust Research,” language fails—and then haunts. Bureaucratic clarity gives way to untranslatable grief, and we’re left with stones, whispers, and the ache of Ich darf leben versus Ikh darf lebn. In “Your Little Boy,” memory clings to a sachet of faded herbs; its scent has vanished, but meaning, miraculously, has not. “Unforgotten” uses the image of a tide and a seashell to hold the weight of grief—what we try to keep, and what is always slipping away.
Even place becomes a ghost of the self. In “Some Memories about a Porch,” a once-vibrant threshold becomes a structure weathered by time and absence. “The Measure of Moss” renders childhood reverence into something mythic and green, a soft testament to endurance and the unseen.
And yet, Issue 9 is not without light. The chiaroscuro here is intentional: darkness made visible so that illumination matters. “Jet Lag” unspools homesickness in fizzy drinks and bike path buzzes; “Spring 2017” offers a corkscrew struggle as both joke and intimacy; “This Day and Thereafter” finds dignity in labor and in letting go.
And yet, for all its weight, this issue does not abandon the reader in shadow. The closing piece, “An Ode to Childhood,” leads us back into the light—not with naïveté, but with earned tenderness. It reminds us that memory, even when sharpened by loss, can still offer shelter.
Thank you for joining us as we chart the blurred contours of presence and absence, visibility and vanishing.
Welcome to Issue 9.
Hannah Cole Orsag
Editor-in-Chief
Editor-in-Chief
Discover the stories behind the stories!Explore the creative heart of each piece in our Artist’s/Author’s Notes, found at the end of every work. Here, contributors reflect on memory, presence, and the thresholds between seen and unseen—offering personal insight into the lines that linger and the moments that shaped their work. |
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To Begin With the Body
Melancolía 2 by Sekinat Oladeji // Visual Art
Dissection by Lesley Curwen // Poetry
Cerberus by Maggie Slepian // Fiction
On Finding a Dead Deer in My Backyard by Nolo Segundo // Poetry
This Day and Thereafter by Josh Mahler // Poetry
Dissection by Lesley Curwen // Poetry
Cerberus by Maggie Slepian // Fiction
On Finding a Dead Deer in My Backyard by Nolo Segundo // Poetry
This Day and Thereafter by Josh Mahler // Poetry
Reverence, Remembered
Unforgotten by Jamie Lim // Poetry
The Memory Box by John RC Potter // CNF
Your Little Boy by Patricia Russo // Poetry
Some Memories about a Porch by Maggie Nerz Iribarne // CNF
The Measure of Moss by Sherrida Woodley // CNF
The Memory Box by John RC Potter // CNF
Your Little Boy by Patricia Russo // Poetry
Some Memories about a Porch by Maggie Nerz Iribarne // CNF
The Measure of Moss by Sherrida Woodley // CNF
The Nature of Knowing
Naming Animals by Kate Maxwell // Poetry
The Young Toad by Brandon Shane // Poetry
Piece of the Ark by Carol Boutard // Poetry
Be. by Amelia Averis // Poetry
A Complicated Relationship with Snow by Nicole Stewart // CNF
The Young Toad by Brandon Shane // Poetry
Piece of the Ark by Carol Boutard // Poetry
Be. by Amelia Averis // Poetry
A Complicated Relationship with Snow by Nicole Stewart // CNF
Inheritance & Absence
Gem of My Eye by Heather Pegas // Fiction
Copperfield by Kelli Dianne Rule // Fiction
You Have Reached by Alice Kinerk // Fiction
The Day I Probably Murdered The Dollar by Carsten ten Brink // CNF
Copperfield by Kelli Dianne Rule // Fiction
You Have Reached by Alice Kinerk // Fiction
The Day I Probably Murdered The Dollar by Carsten ten Brink // CNF
Archive of the Invisible
Learning to Read Yiddish for Holocaust Research by M. Benjamin Thorne // Poetry
The Dutch Room Couple by Robert Fillman // Poetry
Melancolía 1 by Sekinat Oladeji // Visual Art
The Dutch Room Couple by Robert Fillman // Poetry
Melancolía 1 by Sekinat Oladeji // Visual Art
Love and Other Minor Miracles
Spring 2017 by Maura Monaghan // Poetry
Jet Lag by Maura Monaghan // Poetry
An Ode to Childhood by Jamie Lim // Poetry
Jet Lag by Maura Monaghan // Poetry
An Ode to Childhood by Jamie Lim // Poetry