BEA AGBI
I didn’t want the mango. I didn’t / want it I was full Just let me have a bit / but my mother said no bites, / peeling and putting it / into my hands, yellowredgreen soft / and malleable in its ripeness, eat / the whole thing. …Continue Reading Mango
BRIANNA ZHANG
It is baffling that these people garner millions of likes, considering how they spend twenty four hours like it’s nothing! Sleeping through a third of the day—unbelievable. Ten minutes of meditation? It took me one hour to complete university……Continue Reading Devour
HANNAH KWON
and this salt would spread quickly, like grief / always does, trickling into red pepper paste / and flakes of anchovy skin, salt desecrating / the soup we’d double-dip our spoons into, / so when metal met our lips, …Continue Reading family dinner: still life in silence and salt
MADI SUH
in lieu of language, / i stuff my mouth. / i do not know how to say the words for all the banchan. / i only know how to eat, / how to be hungry, how to ask for more….Continue Reading In Lieu of Language
By FEDORA LIU
So sugary sweet / It rotted my teeth // Back then there were boundless pools of sap here / I thought I would never go hungry // I thought I would live forever….Continue Reading Growing Pains
MACKENZIE DUNSON
The last thing my mother made for me was an apple spice cake. She always took pride in it because of the expansive apple tree that was the luminary of our backyard. It has always been the most beautiful thing about our house. The branches reaching for the sky, leaves and breath filling my own lungs, its fruit filling my stomach, and its blossoms filling my mind….Continue Reading Spiced Apple Cake
RUTH ZURAW
Our morning-stretched shadows / graze, overlap on the pavement— / heat curling around calves / in gentle waves. …Continue Reading Rose Colored Boxes
LILA SCHLISSEL
She will bring me gifts / teeth and black licorice lips cradling some / bird / with hollow bones / and lay / it / in my lap / unscathed, if confused / and / covered in a little spit…Continue Reading Bringing
OLIVIA KELLER
Every day is the same. / Wake up, go to class, do work, go to bed. / Like clockwork – tirelessly stuck in a loop going tick by tock. / Boredom sets in and my thoughts wonder….Continue Reading One More Bite
GABBY AVENA
A hold unto our- / selves, hidden under blankets / that color the air // red is the evening cupped in / eggnog and projector light…Continue Reading Forticus, the Blanket Fort
By AIDAN COOPER
You river your fingers, / I dip my toes in, water us // until lotus flowers ring / the space between our knuckles….Continue Reading Fragment #2 (Lysis)
ELSA LYONS
Does the orange want to be peeled? Tenderly / I push my fingernail through her stubborn rind, // reveal the bulge of her white-veined flesh. / She’s almost throbbing with juices. They’re almost // circulating through her. It’s almost music….Continue Reading Orange Me Open
By SARAH WU
I learned to be wrapped from a young age. Underneath a Christmas tree, I sat below their pine bottoms. Dangling lights brushed my forehead. Taught how presents should be dressed in lovely colors. Taught to be an object, paper wrapping hiding the curve of the natural body within…Continue Reading Christmas Gift
ELLA LIN
and she peels me / another mandarin. i imagine / we must look strange, / our mouths dripping juice like broken faucets / into the night. her black hair / falling further, with nothing below. the broken mirror hanging / above wet paint on bathroom walls….Continue Reading mandarin
By MIKIKO SUGA
Every summer is a tradition of disappearing. There are times to be corporeal, and other times to dematerialize. It may simply be a matter of traversing impermanent boundaries, where one simply consumes what is in front of them. There is no need to contemplate too deeply, because something is always at risk of breaking if I do. …Continue Reading konbini
By TOBY ROSEWATER
Peeling floral wallpaper covers every corner of the senior center’s game room, wilting like an unfurling flower come springtime. The room holds five round tables, and every Sunday, the Austin senior card group fills every seat. …Continue Reading The Game Room
CHELA CUNNINGHAM
i want to study your lines of (division) / the trinities that make you (divine). / and when the Christian missionaries walk by us / i’ll ask them if they’ve heard of my god …Continue Reading Communion
VENUMI GAMAGE
Ginger tea to cure a cold. Ginger tea with a heaping of honey to fix a sore throat…….Continue Reading Teatime
EVELYN CHI
阿公，jiă bà buāi? 你吃了沒？(Taiwanese and Mandarin for, “Have you eaten?” This is also a common greeting among friends and family members, since hospitality and food are an important part……Continue Reading “Dear A Gong”
By MEL ARTHUR, SARAH WU, and GABBY AVENA The theme of Snack Time feels like a theme that needs to be shouted at the top of one’s lungs. Imagine if we all collectively went: SNACK TIME! SNACK TIME! SNACK TIME! over and over again, how disruptive that may seem but also how joyous. I like…Continue Reading Fall 2024
WILLOW DELP
She is seventeen years old, and she has mastered the art of cruelty. She brings people close enough, lures them with her sweetness — her fair skin, her honeyed voice. She emanates not just a sort of radiance…Continue Reading Bite-Size
KATERYNA HAVRYSHCHUK
The oldest among them, Ryta lit the match. In a blink, gas swallowed the heat and burped out a blue holo around the burner. A piece of butter in the pan began to soften. A clump of honey, however, didn’t rush to lose shape.
…Continue Reading Honey Cake
VARSHA PALANIYANDY
When Malin threw open a trapdoor in a condemned warehouse’s floor and ordered Rani to get in, she wondered – again – how her life had gotten so covert in mere months….Continue Reading There Are Many Ways to Starve
KIDANE PAIK
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Red Cap. She lived with her mother and father in a little village on the edge of the Red Forest….Continue Reading Red Cap
CRAWFORD DAWSON
It was freshly Christmas Eve, about two hours into the newly born day. In my memory, it was snowing, but a piece of me now doubts that….Continue Reading A Christmas (Eve) Story
TAPTI SEN
I taste dirt. I chew flesh. I pick at scabs. I gnaw at flesh like a dog that just can’t let go. I twirl my fork around tendrils of hair. I roll ice cubes on my tongue. I lick at my collarbones, prodding and probing like a—…Continue Reading Homecoming
MERRICK LAWSON
There is clementine sticky on her fingers. False girl. See, there is a chicken on the stove, a breast that is not unlike her own, and the edges of her are fuzzed alloy like the brass samovar across the room….Continue Reading Citrus Chicken
ALEX WOMACK
My mind is hyperactive. My surroundings — a dull classroom, the homework on my desk, the suburban view from a passenger window — remain in my vision…Continue Reading Scene
CAMILA MASSAKI GOMES
Memory tastes of grape. I thought this as I lay in the bed of my attic room….Continue Reading It Tastes of Grape
CLARA CHIU
And in those gaps that mediate truth, I’ll wait for you in the field we talked of,…Continue Reading The Moldau