Announcing Half Mystic’s Nominees for the 2025 Pushcart Prize

Each of these pieces pulls us into sharp-eyed focus, reminds us why we’re here & who we’re becoming. Best of luck to our nominees. Here’s to possibility.

Introducing Sevdah

In Issue II of our second opus, desire is holy & heavy as the still before the train comes. Moor us in the unquenchable. We want a begging to believe in.

Music, AnnouncementsTopaz WintersJuly 18, 2024

“It’s the dancer’s leap on the downbeat that gives the illusion of flight.” (Will Cordeiro on Presto)

Bang, the universe began—and ended. A cosmos is reduced to an epigram. Narrative allows us to dash through eternity as quick as a quantum leap.

“It is an alchemical process, making something new from bits and pieces.” (An Interview With Morphic Rooms)

I wanted to create a visual language in my art practice that reflected the way these musical cut-ups and abrasions sounded to me—transmuted, rejoined.

“Hope, no matter how unlikely, is still worth singing for. There has to be magic in that.” (Maggie Warren on Presto)

For me, these realities of nature reveal a sense of presto: an inherent poetry to this life, a chance to find meaning and magic in a world we share with such strange creatures.

Literature, Music, Personal Essay, PoliticsGuestJuly 7, 2024Maggie Warren

From the Editor: The Presto Issue

I’m inclined to think life or thoughts or ideas aren’t a blur of movement so much as a collage of image and voice: layered, constant, revved, and singing.

The Presto Letters

In an older sense of the word, to understand means “to stand among.” When I need to understand anything, I often stand among songs.

Songs for the Presto Issue (A Selection)

An ineffable, blink-quick mix of songs chosen by our team & contributors to evoke the flirtation of silk & song woven through the presto issue.

"A ringing clarity, followed by smoke. Deliberate naughtiness." ([sarah] Cavar on Presto)

What would my craft be, we and I, if not for the lovers I share us with?

Literature, Music, Personal Essay, PoliticsGuestMay 28, 2024[sarah] Cavar, Leila Chatti, Mary Oliver, Chen Chen, nat raum

Preorders Are Open for Opus II, Issue I: Presto

Issue XI lives on the currency of old speed & new dreams, & right at the moment when you think you’ve learned its dance, it dares you to circle back & look again.