Category: Issues

Orange Me Open

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

Christmas Gift

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

mandarin

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

konbini 

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 

Bite-Size

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

Homecoming

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