The final Volume of The 22

| The 22 Magazine

Dear Everyone,

First, thanks for being you.

Thanks for all your ideas, work, events, and gracious praise you’ve sent over the past years. It is with no small amount of bittersweet sadness that I’m officially announcing that Volume 4 will be the last issue of The 22 Magazine for the time being. After much discussion over the holidays between myself and others, we’ve come to the conclusion that as much as we love this project and the people who take part in it, our current opportunities and obligations elsewhere are making it impossible for us to take the time and patience needed to make this project A+. That being said, I don’t worry. There are so many publications out there doing great things, I’m certain this drop in a bucket won’t be missed, nor forgotten.

If anything changes we will certainly be here to get publishing back on track.

We are still in the process of discussing a possible book publishing project in the next few years (similar to what we do now, on a more lax schedule.) On that note. The final volume will be released in just a few weeks and we will announce it available for print and online. We will follow with the closing up of shop.Have we told you how much fun you were to work with? Have we reminded you how excited we are to see you future work?

Well we are. What an amazing collection of creatives we’ve encountered.

Please do not give up the good work.

Don’t hesitate to give us a shout if you have questions, concerns or just want to say goodbye.

We cannot thank everyone enough who participated and contributed to this project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Editor and Publisher,

Cat Gilbert

At Walden Pond by Mitchell Grabois

| The 22 Magazine

 

My car was rolling

but it was dying

 

Mercedes and Audi wheelwomen

sped by

blaring their horns

a form of screaming

screaming a form of hate

 

We were very near Walden Pond

very near transcendentalism

 

I came out of my hotel room the next morning

and couldn’t start my car

Tears came to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks

as if I were a skilled actor

 

A nun came out of the room next to mine

and spied me crying

She came up to me and let me know that she loved me

She loved misery and poverty

and the nearness to Thoreau’s condemned cabin

 

Thoreau needed so little

He didn’t need a Japanese car

He didn’t need a nun to console him

He didn’t need a god of consolation

 

There was a repair shop down the road

and the nun put her shoulder

to the cool metal

applied her love and minimal weight

and together we shoved the vehicle down the road

 

She was sweating when we arrived

and the mechanic

in a Boston accent

condemned me for using a nun

as an animal

 

It was her idea, I said

her idea

 

A nun is like a child, he said

She has to be protected from

her foolish notions

 

Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, one room schoolhouse in Riverton Township, Michigan. His short fiction and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and internationally. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012, and for his poem. “Birds,” published in The Blue Hour, 2013. Grabois’s novel, Two-Headed Dog, is available in print and digitally.