Mount Island No. 4: The lit mag for rural LGBTQ+ and POC voices.

By Mount Island Press, LLC

Issue 4 of Mount Island, the literary magazine for rural LGBTQ+ and POC voices voices. Featuring art by Lilly Manycolors, fiction by Claudine Griggs and Thomas Kearnes, essays by Christa Feazell and Sarah M. Goulet, and poetry by Roman G. Benavidez, Robin Gow, Caitlin Moran, and Tyler Orion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mount Island Press, LLC
• Release date: Oct 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781945722004

Book preview

Editor’s Note

It’s good to be back. This is Mount Island’s fourth issue, but truthfully, in spirit, this is another debut—the inaugural issue of a new beast. Four years ago, when we released Mount Island No. 3: Folklore & Fairytales, we were a merry band of young writers trying out this publishing thing for ourselves. Passionate, but unfocused. Had we continued publishing back in 2015 we might have found some unifying purpose beyond love of lit, but I was too impatient to wait and see. I was a sucker for purpose then, a total Pepé Le Pew. I probably still am, but these days I just might be chasing an actual skunk.

In the years since Mount Island No. 3, I’ve kept at this publishing thing in one way or another, as often as not despite myself, because it just won’t stop mattering to me. Art and literature matter to the body and soul. Sharing art and literature with the world matters, and it matters that what we share with each other be good; that it raise up the spirit, and that spirits who need raising be bathed in it, made ready for the day by it. The spirit needs a cup to share, a fire to gather around, other spirits to gather closer. That is the publisher’s purpose: to make sure the bath is full when you need it. To keep the fire stoked and introduce people to friends, to offer the cups.

In my life, few forces other than publishing have been able to bring people together so earnestly, with such dignity and care. But now more than ever, there’s no ignoring the publishing world’s power to separate and violate. I’ve been lucky to gripe about this over the years with no shortage of other creative smarty pants, and even luckier to work with the folks who came together to bring Mount Island back. The new Mount Island is our shot at lighting a fire where there’s been none; at tending a gathering place for those who share our experiences, our spirits: We’re country. Queer and trans, black and brown, and picnicking on mountaintops, turning the soil and splitting the logs, driving winding roads in trances. It matters that we be together. That we’ve shared the same solitary path through the woods, the same pang of loneliness cut short by the gasp of beauty—crystal stream, bluebird, the green and gold canopy, life. That we can gather together as who we are, unbothered, and that we welcome others to raise their spirits in affinity—that matters. I may be a love-drunk skunk, but I know a good bath when I need one.

In Mount Island No. 4, two deep-sea scientists and a Navy lieutenant face death with camp and grace in Claudine Griggs’ Raptures of the Deep, while in Thomas Kearnes’ And Now the News, a squad of East Texas gays crashes into the dreaded thirty-something wall. Christa Feazell’s SNAFUand Sarah M. Goulet’s Heliocentric weave lines between American gun culture and two queer women’s coming of age. Roman G. Benavidez’s 5:25 and El Valle deliver brief epics on growing up bi in the Rio Grande Valley, and Caitlin Moran’s No Trespassing maps out a butch and a trans boy’s growing room. Robin Gow’s escape and hair and Tyler Orion’s "Selections from Inferior Normal" commune with bodies and souls in transition and the ghosts they leave behind. And Lilly Manycolors’ 7WMXN series answers in otherworldly tapestry our burning question: How do we live in the in-between spaces, and live well?

Raptures of the Deep

By Claudine Griggs

Dr. Sloan laughed at Dr. Trieste without taking his eyes off the portal. Don’t tell me you’re scared, Nitro? I thought that nickname meant you were a fearless female.

No, said Trieste. It just means I can be dangerous around geniuses who act like assholes.

Thanks for the compliment, said Sloan. Besides, I'm not sure one can be a genius without sometimes being considered an ass. We tend to get on people's nerves.

Trieste smiled, and they both got back to work. At every passing landmark, one of them would say beautiful or extraordinary or wonderful.

—

The U.S. Navy’s newest deep-water research vehicle, The Willa-Bee, descended past the 7,000-meter mark on its way to under-explored regions of the Mariana Trench. The water pressure was already over 10,000 psi, but the depths were no match for the three-inch-thick spherical titanium passenger compartment. In fact, the vessel hull could withstand pressures at up to 13,000 meters, deeper than Everest is tall, though there were no ocean trenches yet discovered beyond 11,500 meters. And with crush-depth safety margins, the three-member crew felt as secure as they were excited, despite the inherent dangers of deep-sea exploration, because only one percent of the Pacific Ocean floor had yet been viewed up close and personal. Every trip into the Mariana Trench yielded new bio-geologic wonders. Science careers could be made from these journeys; established careers could be enhanced. Such vessels and expeditions were why many scientists entered their fields in the first place. Like a first love, sighting a new ocean species or underwater geology would be remembered forever.

The three crew members included a designated Navy pilot, Lieutenant William Robest, who was specially trained for Willa-Bee’s expanded capabilities. Also on board were Janet Nitro Trieste of the Scripps Institute, a biological oceanographer, and James Blathey Sloan from the University of Rhode Island’s Marine Science Department whose primary research focused on hydrothermal vents and methane seep. Both loved the ocean; both loved their work. (And before the Rate My Professors website discontinued the practice, both