Current Issue

This 2023 volume is Tab Journal’s eleventh year, and its print issue draws from traditions of how reading materials are made available to readers. Certainly, text is contained in objects such as books, journals, newspapers—with their scale, weight, and page-turning demands. These objects take on their weight based on cover material, size of page, binding, and ink. A single volume of The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (2nd Edition) weighs 14.8 pounds and comes with its own magnifying glass. 

And how are such objects themselves contained? The shelves where books and journals are stored are exclusive to people who can reach, grab, unstack, and navigate codex systems, all within the rooms and buildings that shelves—and readers—occupy. Henry Petroski writes in The Book on the Bookshelf, “Books and bookshelves are a technological system, each component of which influences how we view the other. Since we interact with books and bookshelves, we too become part of the system. This alters our view of it and its components and influences our very interaction with it.”

In Volume 11, Tab Journal questions access in relation to interaction and portability. With digital and audio formats of reading material, what is the place for print? Tab Journal strives for flexibility in a physical interaction yet defies the traditional anatomy of a codex—a spine, page signatures, and an obvious cover. It is not waiting to be chosen from a shelf. Instead, the print issue takes its storage with it in the form of a pouch where other things can join in its container, just as a phone or tablet is a portable container for poetry and much more.

To request one or more copies of the print issue, please use the Contact form.

The online issues in the 2023 volume pick up elements of the print issue’s design, and the entire website is updated to reflect this and shape the reading experience.

A/Steroid and Autoimmunity and Microgravity
Lisa Ampleman 
Dysfunction and Mom’s Martini Shota
Lisa Eve Cheby 
Prescribed Burn
Bonnie S. Kaplan 
Bad Penny and Peom With No Sex in It
Michele Karas 
Obituary for the Order of Things; Or an Abecedarian for Programmed Cell Death 
 Jen Karetnick 
Vocalization and Like a Honeypot
Stefanie Kirby 
Nebbia Fitta 
Angie Macri 
Undying
 Jennifer Martelli 
Recovering, October
Angela Narciso Torres 
Dust of a Thousand Weathers III: An Epistolary of Long Illness
Angela Narciso Torres and Lúcia Leão 
pod
Andrew Brenza 
In Conversation: On Hysteria with Nancy Kuhl
Sam Risak 
Book Review: Flare, Corona by Jeannine Hall Gailey
Ian Koh
Book Review: Cataloguing Pain by Alison Blevins
Makena Metz 
Book Review: Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir by Alison Blevins
Hannah Montante  
Book Review: I Feel Fine by Olivia Muenz
Lydia Pejovic  

A/Steroid by Lisa Ampleman
Autoimmunity and Microgravity by Lisa Ampleman
Mom’s Martini Shot by Lisa Eve Cheby
Prescribed Burn by Bonnie Kaplan
Bad Penny by Michele Karas
Poem With No Sex In It by Michele Karas Sex In It
Obituary for the Order of Things; Or an Abecedarian for Programmed Cell Death by Jen Karetnick
Vocalization by Stefanie Kirby
Like a Honeypot by Stefanie Kirby
Nebbia Fitta by Angie Macri
Undying by Jennifer Martelli
Recovering, October by Angela Narciso Torres
Dust of a Thousand Weathers III: An Epistolary of Long Illness by Angela Narciso Torres and Lúcia Leão
pod by Andrew Brenza
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