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The summer 2012 issue of Fence is cool. In fact, everything about Fence is cool in a very cool-because-it’s-not-even-trying-to-be-cool-way, from its history to its design to its content. Flipping through its pages, I was admittedly intimidated, like a Midwesterner in flip flops who somehow ended up at an ultra-hip party in the East Village of NYC.

Fence is a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism. It was founded in 1998 by Rebecca Wolff as a venue for idiosyncratic and intelligent voices “not easily categorizable in terms of camps of schools of thought” and as a response to the predictable, cookie-cutter approach so seemingly common among journals (albeit, perhaps quite popular ones) of that time. Fence was built for the fence-sitters. Since then, it’s blown up, partnering with the New York State Writers Institute and The University of Albany, and launching Fence Books, its literary press.

At its heart, Fence is a poetry journal. And although there is plenty in the summer issue for non-poetry lovers, most of its 230-plus pages are dedicated to poems. I hesitate to call the poetry experimental, only because I feel the word suggests weirdness.  And, for the most part, I wouldn’t call the works weird--okay, there is a piece about a “semi-erect penis” dipping “into a pile of peanuts” ("Something I Often Think About" by Jacob Severn.) Instead, each poem seems free to roam as it would like, unbound by parameters. Most are challenging, too, bordering on inaccessible while still giving the reader enough hope and intrigue to stay glued.

Take Judith Goldman’s brilliant piece, “Negentropics [Large Eddy Simulation::Amoebaean Song || Naphtha-COREXIT remix],” concerning the Gulf Oil Spill. It’s written in an almost detached technical-speak, a language of its own, and sprawls across several pages like an oil slick itself. Goldman writes:

Surface ’n subsurface recursive dispersive there’s less undispersed on the surface it’s

crude not counterinsurgents

Crude plume’s precursor’s carbon-carbon for catalytic hydrocracking

Upgrades heavy fractions, Carbocation

A delayed coker for anode coke or needle coke

In soaker visbreaking the bulk of the cracking reactions occur on the

Surface ’n subsurface recursive dispersive there’s less undispersed on the surface it’s

crude not burning plastic

Then there’s Brandon Shimoda’s epic, haunting poem, “The Grave on the Wall.” With an otherworldly, post-apocalyptic feel, Shimoda proclaims:

The man with his ribs exposed says, These are my ribs

Head belonging to ammonia, These are my ribs

Turning forgotten boils to life, These are my ribs, but why

Would he want it to be

Quietly the brain end of each day

Allison Carter lightens the mood with her melodic tribute to breakfast, a handful of poems from her series of “35 Breakfast Poems” (“The windows open wide to other kinds of life / Doors open wide to other kinds of life and we / can see the steam rising and a coffee mug perched / yes perched tangentially / on a stump”).  The issue includes two delicate pieces from the poetry power couple, Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop. Rosmarie writes: “But the sycamore stands in the yard all day and all night. And now, though still lifeless in appearance, quickens. Roots gripping farther down.” Though there are far too many poems to give them all justice, other memorable ones include those by Margaret Ross, Cathy Eisenhower, Geoffrey Nutter, and Ana Božičević with images like “tenses lock thyroids to scissored eyelids,” “sweet delicious dew beneath the morning bridges,” and “creeks wash down stained cheeks.”

What ties the poetry together is a generally serious, or at least cerebral, tone and the handful of lighter, quirkier fiction pieces that are mixed in provide a welcome relief. I’m not familiar enough with early Fence to know if it’s moved closer to the center with age, but there are a few stories that are as accessible as those you would find in any other more mainstream journals of Fence’s caliber. Worth noting, this was fiction editor Lynne Tillman’s last issue at the helm.

James Yeh’s “Crawlspace” is a well-crafted and straight-forward story about Jem, a young Asian-American struggling to gain the acceptance of his emotionally impenetrable father, even helping his old man chop down maple trees on Thanksgiving and re-insulate the crawlspace. I loved E.B. Lyndon’s wry story, “To Make Myself Last,” about a pair of frenetic New Yorkers á la Leonard Michaels characters. The narrator is dating her roommate’s ex and trying to cope with the fact that an ovarian abnormality has left her unable to have kids. Lyndon writes: “We ordered small plates of tuna tartar and thinly sliced octopus in truffle oil. My mercury levels were high – the geneticist had ordered every imaginable test – but seafood made me think of boats far away from wherever I happened to be, so I told myself I’d lay off the mercury tomorrow.”          

Don’t fret if you’re looking for more “experimental” stories; there are enough of those in the issue, as well (see “Lucky Fucking Day” by Steve Hughes about a guy with a pumpkin for a head whose mistress gives him a carving job that’s bound to set off red flags with the wife). Paul Lisicky also gives us five shorts, including stories about a restaurant’s “wonder sauce” (“that sauce with the silly name, that seemed to come from childhood, not the realm of debt and insurance”) and an alligator resting in a retention basin with no intention of being “that alligator” (“He will not race toward that man at sixty-five miles an hour. He will not take a bite out his bright blue running shoes”). 

If that’s not enough, the summer issue also boasts art, an interview with artist Ann Pibal, an excerpt from a screenplay by Lonely Christopher, and poems from the UK (which may be the most unorthodox of the lot).

A highlight (both figuratively and literally, as it’s the only piece in the issue set against cool blue pages), is a play by Denis Johnson. “Des Moines,” with its subtext of religion and God’s plan, follows Dan and his wife, Marta, who is dying of cancer, their son who’s had a sex change operation gone wrong, a cross-dressing priest, and a woman whose husband has just been killed in a plane crash. It’s much funnier than it sounds. It starts simple enough with the old couple chatting in the kitchen before building to a furious crescendo with the characters all getting drunk together and singing karaoke. A scene where Dan and Marta are discussing the priest shows off Johnson’s sharp dialogue and his penchant for zingers: 

DAN: I think it was – I mean, I’m sure of it, Mart. Here’s the thing, the Padre, the thing about the Padre. Father Michael. I’m absolutely sure it was him. It was Father Michael… Not just somebody who looked like him, so don’t say that.

MARTA: I’m not. But not Father Mike.

DAN: Not the Mike. The Michael.

MARTA: Well, if it was Michael, it was Michael.

DAN: It’s not his fault. You can’t really choose your occupation.

MARTA: You chose the Army all those years.

DAN: I chose the Army, but I didn’t choose the Motor Pool.

MARTA: A priest wearing lipstick. Well, ain’t that a kick in the teeth.

Fence is an extremely difficult market to crack. A quick trip over to Duotrope suggests it accepts 0.35% of submissions at best.  It may take a while to hear back, too, possibly upwards of 300 days for an acceptance.

Some pieces are available on the website if you crave a taste of the summer issue (and past issues, as well). Or you can buy the whole thing for $10 (a one-year subscription is $17). For those who like their meat and potatoes or more conventional works, it may not be the greatest match. But for others who are looking to be challenged both creatively and intellectually, it would be hard to find a journal that rivals this one.