ALT Dear Counterclock family, It’s been a minute! We hope you all are staying healthy and safe and that, as always, you’re finding time to spend with words and art, both others’ and your own. Obviously, we have not been very active since our last issue was released in the spring of 2024. Our long silence is largely due to technical issues with the website. These issues prevent us from editing our website in any meaningful way, and they have proved unsolvable after almost a year of attempted fixes and multiple extended conversations with the SquareSpace support team. These problems are not unique to us—other online literary magazines have had to migrate website hosts for similar reasons. As such, we are facing a fork in the road as far as COUNTERCLOCK’s future. We sat down as an editorial team and considered our options.

ALT COUNTERCLOCK is almost ten years old and has seen multiple editorial boards and conceptual iterations. We decided against shuttering the journal entirely. In a precarious online landscape where the link to a published poem can go dead at any point, our longevity is something to be proud of, which is why want to make our next decision conscientiously and with deliberate gravity and intention as we migrate web hosts and reconsider our vision and goals for the journal and come back better and stronger than ever. This will take some time, but we are excited for our journal to evolve with our contemporary landscape and to continue creating space for art and literature even, and especially, when those creative practices are under increasingly alarming constraints. Our Pop Punk Poetics folio, co-edited by Maria Gray and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong, will be published as a collaboration with ONLY POEMS. We are eternally grateful to Karan and their team for helping us see this project through.

ALT The folio will still appear in its original form on our new website, which is slated to go public in early 2026. COUNTERCLOCK will not release any new journal issues in 2025, and submissions received via email during this time will not be reviewed. Existing contributors’ publication links should not be affected, but we may organize them differently on the new website. We will update contributors via email if this is the case. Any applications for staff positions at this time will also not be reviewed as we regroup and reconsider the future of COUNTERCLOCK. We’re looking forward to COUNTERCLOCK’s next iteration and we hope you all will love it as much as we already do. Thank you for your immense patience and understanding. With love, Rachel, Maria, & Eliza

ALT Social Skills Training by Solmaz Sharif   Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What’s the problem? Studies suggest it’s best the help reply My pleasure and not No problem. Studies suggest it’s best not to mention problem in front of power even to say there is none. Gloria Steinem says women lose power as they age and yet the loudest voice in my head is my mother. Studies show the mother we have in mind isn’t the mother that exists. Mine says: What the fuck are you crying for? Studies show the baby monkey will pick the fake monkey with fake fur over the furless wire monkey with milk, without contest. Studies show to negate something is to think it anyway. I’m not sad. I’m not sad. Studies recommend regular expressions of gratitude and internal check-ins. Enough, the wire mother says. [ran out of space. full poem also here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/saeedjones/poem-social-skills-training-by-solmaz-sharif]

ALT ID: A gradient graphic says "We're hiring," with smaller bubbles that say "APPLY BY JUNE 25" and "publisher."

ALT ID: A gradient graphic says, "be ROOM‘s new publisher. Seeking candidates passionate about Room’s mandate ⎯ to serve writers, editors, and artists of marginalized genders, including cis and trans women, trans men, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary people, with a special focus on the voices of 2SLGBTQ , BIPOC, and disabled writers, editors, and artists. A strong commitment to anti-oppressive practices in publishing is a requirement. Permanent, full-time role starts July 8th, 2024 $22.37/h, 34 hours per week Primarily work-from-home, but requires regular trips to Vancouver locations BIPOC, queer, and marginalized applicants strongly encouraged to apply!"