ZOE ALARCON
at this time is relinquishing i / fall up my throat and pray, / to non-thoughts of non-time, / to hardly grasp // i Blaze and remember i’m / Free to remember / Free to press myself against the fire of action…Continue Reading Joy
Joy
Archive
A Secret Door
KAELA LIU
We crossed the corner into an unfamiliar cul-de-sac. I had long since lost track of where we were walking, preferring instead to mindlessly track the rhythm of my pace with respect to my brother’s…Continue Reading A Secret Door
Salted
KAREN LEE
Crinkled sheets and cascaded shadows / Oh sinful sun, I gobbled it whole / Rolled around my mouth, underneath my tongue / Silken days were no longer / Underneath starlit skies because back then…Continue Reading Salted
Palm
M. LAWSON
The assembly line continued: the other angels carded the wool, dip-dyed it pink in the great tin pot on their table, and fed it into the spinning wheel, which they wound on a cone that F— knit…Continue Reading Palm
lone goose
RUTH ZURAW
how lovely to be alone / to trace a winding route in / piercing white. // how lovely to crave / to yearn for wood paneling and grimy tile / that failed to grace your bulbous eyes. // how lovely to creep and crawl…Continue Reading lone goose
I tear open the sky
MAX PASAKORN
and nothing comes out. I didn’t know / what I was expecting— //
babies, perhaps? Ones with wings / too small to lift them back up, / cursed little things / with no-return policies….Continue Reading I tear open the sky
Awakening of Reverence
MEL ARTHUR
…the researcher nibbles at [murmurs] and learns what it means for hands to enfold in one, too, tree steps. Tensions that are touched upon include affliction…Continue Reading Awakening of Reverence
Stand to See
NICOLE ITKIN
not echoes, maybe / not even ghosts / still, they stand in
for // everything (everything) / I need most. // A girl in red curls over a bridge, / Dress trailing longer, lower- // who’s falling?…Continue Reading Stand to See
Observations at the Gallery
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I experienced the soft colliding of bodies as more of a pleasure and less of an annoyance. In the crowded gallery, I immediately made out the sound of the bass, the piano, the drums…Continue Reading Observations at the Gallery
Illusioned
PAULINE BISSELL
Look: / I once believed my blood ran blue in my body, just because my veins told me so. We keep telling ourselves little lies. We’re not supposed to believe them, but I do….Continue Reading Illusioned
Faith, Fear, and Finding My Path
PHO VU
For those who are brought up in Asian households, “reverence” is like “respect” but with a higher level of intensity. In case you are Asian but do not see the word that way, my statement merely stems…Continue Reading Faith, Fear, and Finding My Path
Addiction
SEBASTIAN PAREDES
He drinks coffee. He embraces the bitter liquid. He does not care that it burns the roof of his mouth. He does not care that he can see his hands trembling. He does not care that he can feel his body shaking….Continue Reading Addiction
Sketches of the Past
DAVIS RENNELLA
To remember is to live again. It takes a collaboration of our powers of feeling– living in the raw sensory and emotional records imprinted on our bodies, combining them with awareness…Continue Reading Sketches of the Past
Resurrection Ferns
SONIA CHAJET WIDES
waving forests carpet tree branches / trunks, Dragon scales and hair sprouting / sometimes so dense that the bark is made invisible / the tree / becomes a tower gorgeous / fractal ferns…Continue Reading Resurrection Ferns
প্রণাম (Blessings)
By TAPTI SEN Kneel. A light touch on your temple. Rise. Kneel: Touch your head to their feet. Your knees sting against the cold marble. Your fingers brush their toes. Seconds pass. Hours pass. You hold your breath, trying not to look at curled up toenails, worn with age. Laughter up above you. Shoulders tremble….Continue Reading প্রণাম (Blessings)
The Perfect Man
MACKENZIE DUNSON
A row of homes. Perfect homes, like they were pasted from the pages of a catalog. Sprawling white picket fences ran over the hills, connecting the houses in a puzzle, endlessly together…Continue Reading The Perfect Man
Island of Reverence
WILLOW DELP
The dictionary is wrong. The dictionary is written by parents and upright magistrates and kings all ill-acquainted with true reverence, the reverence that makes you sob and beg and wail and grove…Continue Reading Island of Reverence
Fall 2022
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
A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth
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
Good Life
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
Blueshift
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
WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
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
Water Beneath the Bridge
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
dead on arrival
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
Km:mk
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
(Night)Blind
TAPTI SEN
“রাতকানা” she calls them, / the fools who would return home too late, / trampling over paddy fields and marshy soil / feet caked just enough to miss awaiting rough cement…Continue Reading (Night)Blind
A School Day along 城門河
PRISCILLA LEE
An old man with his fanny pack radio strolls by […] One of the girls sweats past him and wonders if swinging her arms like that would propel her forward in this deathly test of fitness. …Continue Reading A School Day along 城門河
A Sovereign / Two Bodies
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
Braid Us
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
Wildflower Humans
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