Magazine Stand :: Superpresent – Spring 2024

Superpresent is an art and literature magazine that puts equal emphasis on visual art and the written word. The theme for Spring 2024 is “survival.” Survival has been a central theme in literature — and life — since the beginning. Odysseus, Moses, Job, Ishmael, Jane Eyre all found ways to survive physical, spiritual, and emotional challenges of the first order. The ways in which survival is marked, however, may have changed. In addition to heroes and their journeys (see, for instance, in this issue of Superpresent, Sharon Kopriva’s paintings of iconic women and Crawdad Nelson’s “Walking Home in the Rain”), received divinations are presented (see Duncan Forbes’ “Cappella de Ossos,” Charter Weeks’ “Preacher Man,” and Mouse Mikala’s “Moaning on Christian Radio”) and encounters with beasts, lots of beasts (see Sharon Whitehill for spiders; Al Salwin for rats; Chelsie Kreitzmn for snakes; Diane Raptosh for roosters; Luis Angel Abad for chimps, piglets and tigers; Laura McCullough for koi; and Majid Bazei for dogs). Surviving relationships with oneself is explored in Cori Matusow’s “Tomboy,” while Elisa Manzini’s “Teeth” vividly describes surviving one’s abusers. Science strives to serve as a survival mechanism in Erica Miriam Fabri’s “Quantum Entanglement is the Scientific Explanation of Love.”