Good day friend,
We here at Sentenced are HARD AT WORK!
This is SENTENCED’s fourth weekly newsletter. Thank you for signing up! You will not be disappointed.
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Update: No Update
I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but: not much has gone on this week. We’re working on sorting through everyone’s submissions. We’re working on the website. YES. We removed the typographical justification. We’re making sure anything and everything we do can be amazing.
Reminder: Don’t Be A Panican
Under Sentenced’s editors, this magazine is smashing through the chaos and destruction left by the literary establishment and releasing the most aggressive pursuit of the Marxist literary agenda in history. While our detractors collude to call us unserious, they’re simply lying to mask the undeniable truth: American Letters are safer, stronger, richer, and more secure than at any point in decades.
Reminder: We are building a system that allows anyone to read fantastic writing.
And can we go ahead and acknowledge something?
Life cannot just be about one sad thing after another. There must also be things that make us super excited and inspired about the future. This is one of things. It will so insanely cool. Bigtime.
Update: Mx. Period
We’ve received an update from our Private Eye, Fluke Dimsworth, regarding the murder of our mascot, Mx. Period.
When I was young, my father told me it was best to think of a man as a see-through thing with a layer of fat around it. But all the fat in the world couldn’t cover the glass soul of a man like me. I tend to fall for dames; I’ve been known to lovebomb, attach myself too quickly, propose on the second date… And when I do any of that, I fall flat on my face and end up nixing it with the dame right when she reciprocates. All the Instagram Reels I’ve been watching say I’m afraid to let myself be happy. My biggest fear is, the algorithm might know me better than I know myself.
I staked out Miss Comma’s house on Ink Street, and tailed her to the Blue Dolphin Jazz Club. Soon as I saw her, sitting sidesaddle on a stool by the bar, I was enamored. Here was a gal with a curved tail, just how I like it. The fontmakers draw ’em straight as a twig these days, no point to speak of… and speaking of the point, it was as round as Mx. Period had been. She had the kind of point you’d never think to betray you until the moment you had a knife in your heart.
“I knew your sibling,” I said, sitting next to her. I ordered a scotch, and she turned away. “I try to be forthright.”
“I guess so.” She spoke those words like she was saying something acerbic, only she wasn’t. Classic defense mechanism from a gal like her. I could see she wasn’t the type to give too much away. “You’re the private dick Sentenced hired.”
“And you’re a hard girl to track down, considering the fact that you wanted me hired..”
“I didn’t want you hired.”
“Oh yeah? How come?”
“Because Mx. Period killed hirself, plain and simple.” I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t seem to wipe the grin off my face, then. The idea of it.
“What’d ze have to be so sad about?”
“Ze was a sad-sack. If you really knew hir, you’d know that. But, I know you’re only here for the money.”
Comments about my line of work, ones like that, were lines I tried not to hold against people. Best to brush over it.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ms. Comma. It’s not just the assignment, doll. You see, I’ve been spending lots of time on the chaise, lately.” This was true. I go four times a week, with two different therapists. Helps to get the bad thoughts out of my head, the ones which spawn out of the miasma of my work. “My therapist told me I oughtta chase down the ghost of my past.”
“Mx. Period being the ghost,” she said.
“Or one of them.” I rubbed my eyes. It’d been days since I slept. Couldn’t get the cracks of hir corpse bleached out of my eyes. “I stay up every night thinking about this chart I saw. Attachment theory, they call it. Four types. Secure, preoccupied, dismissive, and fearful. Everyone falls somewhere on that spectrum, a mix of different styles of communication.”
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“Where are you on it?” She asked.
“That’s just the thing,” I said. Took a long drag of my cigarillo and put the butt out in my half-finished drink. “I’ve never been in a proper relationship before. My therapist says that’s fear. I tend to think it’s less sinister. I’m waiting for the one.”
“Have you ever come close?”
“Many times.” I thought of all the punctuation I’d left at the end of a sentence across the years. “I’m rubbing up against death every day now… she seems to be my true love. I felt a kinship with Mx. Period, so part of me wonders if ze felt the same. In with any unseemly kinds?”
“More than you could imagine,” Miss Comma said. “Hir house was like a gambling den, filled with more crooks more experimental than the ones at the artist alley of a shepherd’s convention.”
“Experimental how?”
“Avant-garde,” she said.
I was reminded once again of Sentenced, the so-called “avant-garde” literary publication who had hired me. I wondered how pointed her language was. Rather, I wondered if she’d sharpened it, or if it had nicked me on accident.
“Got a name on any of them?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Ze was always hanging around the head of this burglary ring that only hits up houses in poor neighborhoods. His name is Crazy-Eyed Jake Buckingham, or Short Jake.”
“Is he the type to fly off the handle?”
“Short Jake?” She laughed. “No, not him. He’s cool as a cucumber.”
I stood to leave, no time to waste not heading after Short Jake, but she grabbed me by the arm. I shook her off.
“Stay a while, Luke,” she said. “Listen to the band.”
“As lovely as you are, Miss Comma, my business is too pressing to stick around listening to ‘As Time Goes By’.”
I picked my hat up and shoved it over the scalp. It’s not the best fit. Clamps the top of my head a bit.
Thank you to Fluke Dimsworth for the update! Please reach out if you think you can help him process anything.
Reminder: Submissions are OPEN!
Submissions for our web and print outlets are OPEN!
Please submit visual art, short comics, and writing ranging from 1 – 4,000 words.
Send your work on over to sentencedlit@gmail.com!
Promotion
“Sentenced Vol. 1, No. 1 – to Death” is out now, and you can purchase it by sending us a message through the official channel which fits best for you!
It’s ten dollars, plus shipping.
Words of Wisdom via Our Matron, Nora Wright
“To be bourgeois is to have a certain type of materialism. You have to think what that means. It means everything that destroys dreams. Everything that destroys anything attractive. That’s what being bourgeois means for me. It means security. It’s mediocrity of the spirit. It’s everything I dislike.”
Jacques Brel, Nous les artistes, documentary, 1979.
“Except sold merchandise,” per Nora.
A toast! To merchandise!
See you in a week,
Sentenced Lit
