Author: The 22 Magazine
The Final 22: Volume 4
The final Volume of The 22
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
Video Weekend: Sebastain Wesman/SŁAWOMIR ZUBRZYCKI
Ellen Jantzen
Alicia Haberman
Melissa Hartley
At Walden Pond by Mitchell Grabois
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.