Exacting Clam

08/02/2024

Coming soon!

29/12/2023

"Savages tiptoe everywhere
as if transporting lit candelabra."

Poetry as only Mike Silverton can. Online and in print, Winter b'23. Subscribe today.

Gustav Fabergé is lost in thought with a half-dozen eggs,“Weeping urchins hanging off eaves, smelling like something.”

28/12/2023

"'No two days the same. Go to foreign places, meet exotic people, lord it over them, and get paid to do it. Call me McIshmael.'"

Fiction by Vincent Czyz. Exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

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27/12/2023

"The young boy knows, or has come to know, that his father is best unspoken of."

Fiction by David Ricchiute. Exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

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26/12/2023

"when young
I knew everything
because I was everything."

Poetry by Oisín Breen, online and more in print, Winter '23. Subscribe today for full access.

https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-11-winter-2023/december-rains/

25/12/2023

"Real dung topples out of the sky . . . "

Poetry by Hélène Sanguinetti (trans. Ann Cefola), exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today for full access.

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24/12/2023

"How can a human being look and smell so foul and still exist . . . "

RE Young on beauty. Exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today for your discounted rate.

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23/12/2023

"'Honey, do you need the toilet?' said the man who was going to destroy her."

Nick Holdstock on perspectives. Exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe and banish tedium.

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22/12/2023

"Last night's snack
Is still being enjoyed
Somewhere
In your body."

Poetry by Daniel Felsenthal, exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today for full access.

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21/12/2023

"When somebody sees us, how do we know?"

Poetry by Glenn Ingersoll, exclusive to print, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

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20/12/2023

"And it is—yes just as the man said, over by the foot of the massif just north of here, northeast . . . "

Fiction by Ben Libman, exclusive to the print edition, Winter '23. Subscribe today for your discounted rate.

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19/12/2023

"While hypnotized, mid-strangulation, she orgasmed violently on stage, toes curling like the talons of a raptor seizing its prey."

Fiction by Kent Kosack, online and in print in the Winter '23 issue. Subscribe for full access.

https://www.exactingclam.com/contributors/kent-kosack/

18/12/2023

"Finally, he came to that corner of the realm where the numinous existence of the peril dwelled."

Fiction by Akshat Khare, exclusive to the print issue, Winter '23. Subscribe for your discounted rate.

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17/12/2023

"Where is the warrior
who conquered my city?
His khakis are ripped,
his message self-pity."

Poetry by PJ Blumenthal, online and in print, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

The reflection of a momentis what I am. Strangers stop to view me, stare into my eyes, blue and glaring, I hear them say, and celebrate my fresh virility. My look is questioning, I’ve heard, my answers muted for eternity. You cannot read the thoughts behind these eyes but be advised: I wasn’t ta...

16/12/2023

"I mention in passing
a fight we had a week ago.
you say: 'what fight?'

ding."

Poetry by DS Maolalai. Print only, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

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15/12/2023

"With stuffed rich stomachs verging on the ache . . . "

Jim Meirose gorges on The Very City of Paris. Exclusive to the print edition, Winter '23. Subscribe for your discounted rate.

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14/12/2023

"Magnanimous, Inquisitive, Challenging, Happy, Amorous, Elegant, Laughing."

Foley on McClure. Print only, Winter '23. Subscribe for full access.

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13/12/2023

"The mountain rises sharply on three sides, tapering out to encircle me with its sloping rock shoulders, with its arms, its hands cupping the lake."

Niamh MacCabe swims. Print only, Winter '23. Subscribe today.

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12/12/2023

"O'er orange juice and steamy tea
The pickles of our poise
were with a tender tine relayed
Into a crunching noise."

Alvin Krinst has a fit. But it passes. Exclusive to the print edition, Winter '23. Sunscribe for full access.

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11/12/2023

"He has no idea that I am one of the women he denounces."

Megan Catana on parental devotion. Exclusive to the print edition, Winter '23. Subscribe for your discounted rate.

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10/12/2023

"My son is researching the Pocket P***y."

Henrietta Goodman on pen*ses and parenting. Exclusive to the print edition, Winter '23. Subscribe for full access.

Relish the calendrical exactitude and clammy convenience of having piping hot issues of Exacting Clam delivered to your door to mark the start of each season.

09/12/2023

"But when a man
has a name like Lovecraft
he has already given us everything."

Kurt Luchs, on and after Jorge Luis Borges. Exacting Clam, Winter '23. Essay online, poetry in print. Subscribe today.

orge Luis Borges needs no introduction, I think to myself. Then I think again, recalling that we are living through a new dark age when much of the past, including the literary past, is being discarded wholesale in a kind of cultural amnesia or cultural lobotomy. And I think perhaps I had better int...

08/12/2023

08/12/2023

"There were years when she cried upon smelling Paco Rabanne Calandre but could not understand why."

on sherry and clean sheets. Exacting Clam, Winter '23. Subscribe for your discounted rate.

here can surely be nothing of sanctity in that high white chemical scent, one of constantly disinfected floors and surfaces. The deliberate, human removal of the traces of other bodies. In these halls, they stave off its opposite, the earth and mould of inevitability, the terrible moss of forgetting...

07/12/2023

"This whole thing sounds a lot like Achilles and the tortoise."

The Nativity—an alternative account from Paolo Pergola. In the Winter issue of Exacting Clam. Subscribe for full access and a discounted rate.

ne day, as if out of nowhere, a comet may appear. In fact, it’s an event that’s already happened many times throughout history. Typically, when a comet appears, some people are compelled to follow it. For example, let's say that a comet becomes visible somewhere on the horizon, say in mid-air. S...

06/12/2023

"Look at the state of my fu***ng car you stupid fu***ng t**t!"

There's no safari quite like a safari. Exacting Clam, Winter issue. Subscribe today for your discounted rate.

t was the morning after a particularly stormy night, the same night our neighbour torched his shed. I didn’t know this neighbour very well, we worked different shifts so we rarely bumped into each other. He was recognisable though for his striking appearance: tall and thin with a long scar that ra...

05/12/2023

"It's enough to give you food poisoning."

Until he was five, Rilke's mother pretended he was a girl. Now, the New Age community has gotten hold of him. steps in. Exacting Clam, Winter issue, print only. Subscribe today for your discounted rate.
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04/12/2023

" . . . he wants to feel it deep inside him . . . "

Melissa McCarthy is almost successful at focussing on the words of . Exacting Clam, Winter issue, out now.

Also between languages? Yes, via translation, the written habit of moving a set of words from one pattern, arrangement, line-up, to another. This can take time, to read, stop, look up, hone. Or, we move between languages by interpretation, which is a spoken and performed behaviour, more immediate, a...

03/12/2023

"Responsible experts in specific fields exist."

Assurances from Jake Goldsmith in the Winter issue of . Out now. Subscribe for your discounted rate.

irst, I have to give some credit to the philosopher Vlad Vexler, who I recommend as a sound analyst of political philosophy, as well as the late Bernard Williams—of whom Vexler is also an admirer. I can’t claim to have much in the way of original thought and I repeat from memory some of what the...

02/12/2023

In a world which, with every passing year, appears to make increasingly more sense, administer to your good-looking self a dose of the antidote. Guillermo Stitch's illuminating and hyper-topical editorial is at this fully operational link: https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-11-winter-2023/from-the-editor/