Editor’s Note By SARAH WU, MEL ARTHUR, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:What do Bridges mean to me? I want to invoke Christopher Soto and what they wrote in the book titled Queer Poets of Color. They borrow a quote from Gloria E. Anzaldua, who writes, “Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of…Continue Reading Fall 2022
WILLOW DELP
The water was brown. / The Brabantio family had adamantly tried to ignore this fact – even the more progressive members politely refused to comment. …Continue Reading Water Beneath the Bridge
GABBY AVENA
we had to learn to share, my sister-and-i. / older by a year, she laid claim to the color purple. there was only one color left for little girls. i hated pink, but it was mine: my-pink, her-purple….Continue Reading WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I’d like to imagine my mother spiraling in space, a constellation of the galaxy Andromeda, blueshifted, moving against the force of time, that force which causes the expansion of the universe….Continue Reading Blueshift
FAHIM ZAMAN
John Borges, we would love to award you, / Before you leave, for a good life / Lived, Johnny – / If not for a few objections. // Let’s see here, ah, at four some years just, / You cursed in Church…Continue Reading Good Life
DUSTIN COPELAND
My mother said that the pedestrian bridge over arrow-straight Route 1 was finally finished and that we were going to stop to talk a walk over it and my brother said what, why…Continue Reading A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth
M. LAWSON
There was a sale at Ace Hardware today: forty percent off washers, so Ophelia walked home with tiny metal discs pinging around in his coat pocket….Continue Reading dead on arrival
RACHEL HENDRICKSON
The woods were broken, Willa decided. The woods were broken, and she didn’t know how to fix them. The Earth always died when December came, but she still found a beauty in it then….Continue Reading A Spot of Pond
TRISTAN MOORE
“How do you think I got lice?” / My client turns her head to an angle, eagerly awaiting a response / I can’t help but think, “How the hell would I know? I’m just here to get rid of it.”…Continue Reading A Strand of Opportunity
ELEANOR WALSH
Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived three sisters. The oldest sister had long, dark hair and knuckles that hissed when they were cracked. …Continue Reading The Three Sisters
EMILY WYKOFF
A blonde woman stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, waiting. Lifting her hand, she brushes a strand of perfectly curled hair into her scarf. She waits patiently, eyes staring off into the distance. …Continue Reading Stars Fallen From The Sky
SONIA CHAJET WIDES
When I was eleven, I started taking the subway alone; I learned what it meant to pick myself up and walk myself down as the train roared rickety […] I was a traveler in my own city….Continue Reading Ferried
SOFIA TENNENT
[They…] are larger than when she last spent time observing them. A headache threatens her temples as she questions yet again what might make this home look right for a family….Continue Reading Perfect and Yellow-Starred
PAULINE BISSELL
That was the week the grapes were swelling and bruising / Purple, dust-seasoned. Again / We filled our pockets until the grapes, sun-burnt / And sun-ripened, burst…Continue Reading Skies Beyond Skies
GABY WEAVER
And there’s nothing I can do to stop myself from breaking into a smile, planting a kiss on your forehead, and whispering, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”…Continue Reading Saturday Morning Ritual
SARAH WU
On the same bridge where my brother threatened to cast his body into the river, you tell me: “Wouldn’t it be fun to jump?” We sit together on the railing. Your eyes are the same color as the sky…Continue Reading Moth to a Burning Flame
MEL ARTHUR
what do you feel in the silence / what do you feel in the warmth / what do you feel in the center of your being / whatdoyoufeel between / silence what–wheredoyoufeel / the warmth lies…Continue Reading Km:mk
MIKAYAH PARSONS
She hugs her arms to her chest, wearing a white baby tee and velvet black lounge pants, dangling her legs over the edge of the bridge when I join her. …Continue Reading Bridges
BLUMA HAMMARHEAD
Here is– the monument, / The bare room heavy with artifacts: / Strange velvet balls, stacks / Of letters, papers, / Old journals full of hypotheticals…Continue Reading Going Back
EVELYN CHI
To be loved / Is to wake up to a bowl of steaming hot 稀飯 / Tender, bright orange 地瓜 floating / In a sea of glistening 白飯, / To have the tablemat set out already…Continue Reading 阿嬤, 我想你
ESTEBAN SANCHEZ
I walk with you through a field of wild grass on a path laid out for us by others. Dandelion seeds float slowly, discernible against the blue sky, like white snowflakes that fall in other parts of the world….Continue Reading Reification: A Question in Serial
By ANONYMOUS
A small stream bubbles below a little bridge whose boards creek disconcertingly when stepped on. Surrounding greenery hums in the wind. Time slows down here, or perhaps doesn’t exist here at all. …Continue Reading Disappearing Bridge
DAVIS RENNELLA
For this solitary space traveler, what had started as a bold expedition to new horizons for his people had become a disorienting journey through a galaxy…Continue Reading Welcome to Earth
CAROLYN THOMAS
[…] even though her mouth wasn’t open. Henry still heard his mother’s voice in the ugliest most peculiar way possible shout, “I hate him! I want to kill him. I hope that bastard dies in his sleep.”…Continue Reading Crossing into Minds
GRACE ESCOE
Great Chasm / An inch filled with a single board / Yet still vast / Yet still devoid // Concrete / Loads of hardened gray / Pillars of stone / All to endeavor / To contain You…Continue Reading Connect
ANNIKA BAJAJ
We met that night on a drawbridge, in the rain: you with golden hair plastered to your face, tangling up in long eyelashes your mother likes to call ‘ladylike’ and you tend to label as ‘inconvenient.’ …Continue Reading Combustible Potions
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
[…] the desert hues that usually fade into the background fill the entire landscape, and I wonder, what happens when the whole world around you becomes the colors that usually uplift other things?…Continue Reading About a place between places
BRYAN FLORES
The entire town mocked him and some threatened him with pesticide when he approached, but no one had the heart to tell him that his father was not a wildflower human….Continue Reading Wildflower Humans
AWA DIOP
Adja parts the last section of hair with the rattail comb to hook in another box braid. She’s working on the last two braids of Michelle’s hair, a first-time customer. …Continue Reading Braid Us
AIDAN COOPER
Her Prayer like a touch and boiling / Shiver turning the dust-clouds into rain. // He stands before a lectern named Wash / Where he uncoils ribbons from the holes / He cut through his fingertips the callouses…Continue Reading A Sovereign / Two Bodies