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
(Night)Blind
Category: Issues
Moth to a Burning Flame
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
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
Saturday Morning Ritual
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
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
Skies Beyond Skies
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
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
Perfect and Yellow-Starred
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
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
Ferried
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
About a place between places
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
Stars Fallen From The Sky
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
Combustible Potions
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
The Three Sisters
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
Connect
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
A Strand of Opportunity
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
Crossing into Minds
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
Broken Black Heart
MIKAYAH PARSONS
Broken Black heart. / Tattered Black heart. / Broken Black fish. / Battered Black fish. / Black fish out of water. // I offered my Black heart on a silver platter, / And they took it for the slaughter….Continue Reading Broken Black Heart
Sea of Sorrow
TIIA MCKINNEY
Sparkling dark blue waters violently crashed over my head, / They pinned me under their strong currents, forcefully grabbing me in a chokehold / I desperately inhaled, trying to taste the salty air on my tongue,…Continue Reading Sea of Sorrow
Ruminations
ZOE ALARCON
You would approach your mother’s bed / Afraid of an intruder / Now you approach it / Afraid of yourself / Hoping she can save you from eternal tinnitus / Drown it forever with a peaceful sonata …Continue Reading Ruminations
Flashbulb Memory and the Things I Have to Remind Myself to Forget
SOFIA HINCAPIE-RODRIGO
1. It’s a hot one, even for the South—the kind of summer where we are sticky with sunscreen and smelling like a flurry of coconuts and careless adolescence….Continue Reading Flashbulb Memory and the Things I Have to Remind Myself to Forget
my brother gets his college admissions letter
SARAH WU
On the day my brother gets his college admissions, he picks his envelope up ever so gently, drags a finger across the edge of the flap, and peels back the white like he would peel back the skin of a banana. …Continue Reading my brother gets his college admissions letter
the breakfast date (break, fast!)
SAM SPRATFORD
before i learned to swerve down / narrow city streets— / i fell / i fell in love with the existentialists’ sooty prose / peering into an opium abyss and seeing my reflection in obsidian and…Continue Reading the breakfast date (break, fast!)
I Broke My English
PRISCILLA LEE
Λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, scan my pinking flesh, / dented divots from my inky pen, no / 墨 to drink. Excuse me, I play with babbles, / singing your scribbles. // Draw it out. Pray, jazz with me. Pluck the hairy / strokes and Trace calligraphy.
…Continue Reading I Broke My English
Pause and Break
CAROLYN THOMAS
The winds howl outside, and the rain smacks the ground with a heavenly force. Although it is nighttime, the lightning strikes illuminate the sky—the clapping sound of thunder echoes outside. …Continue Reading Pause and Break
Hamadryad
PAULINE BISSELL
So, the will still bends / Beyond the sentimental / And you, still / Wielding the fissured, the fragmented, / The crumbling under and cracking apart….Continue Reading Hamadryad
Broken Hinges
GRACIE ROWLAND
I slammed the door in Hope’s face and told Her / I was better off alone, my pride too brazen to realize that good intentions / Matter more than harsh words spoken over late night calls. / I was too ashamed to apologize back then, too ashamed of the broken hinges I left. …Continue Reading Broken Hinges
Not Let Go of Hope
GRACIE ROWLAND
I dance under the imagined warmth of the moonlight, / Twirl from one end of the rose garden to the other / Until my head is spinning, spinning, with the / Stars like a laughing tapestry above my head. / I forget about funerals and fallacies, / Genocide and god under the moonlight….Continue Reading Not Let Go of Hope
Untitled
MARIANA RIVERA-DONSKY
She got in the car at half-past two in the morning. / It didn’t really matter to her where exactly she was going as long as it was away. There was only a certain amount of time that she could ignore the steadily growing pressure in her chest – right underneath her collarbone. Right above her lungs. She had lain in bed for hours doing absolutely nothing productive….Continue Reading Untitled
Lamplight
LELAND CULVER
Your face I thought your face I wished your face would long have left me, gone away, above. / Unharmed, although below I go, except for silent wishing, occasionally fishing for unhurried hypothetic love. / But glinting in the dark, your eyes espy my every dreaming thought like burning violet embers I remember once were blue….Continue Reading Lamplight