Nonfiction from Lauren Otolski
Photo: James Stamler winter/spring On nights like this, our fluorescent-lit bedroom was the last bright window. The traffic lights five stories below cycled through their colors for empty sidewalks. Graphs spilled across her computer screens, calculations lined my whiteboard, and the room filled up with exhaustion forced upon us by assignments of tangled, angry equations […]
Nonfiction from Sue Mitchell
Photo: Paul Hanaoka An Impurrfect Life I yowl at the offending empty can and turn imploring eyes to Mum. When it comes to pleading, Shrek’s Puss-in-Boots is a mere gifted amateur. Me? I’m a pro. A master manipulator. Utterly irresistible. Mum and I stare into the tuna can void, willing it to magically replenish. I […]
Nonfiction from Sarosh Nandwani
Photo: Katherine Chase blueberry cataclysm after the cataclysm, my parents, rightfully paranoid, hoarded almond milk and cashews. no fruit, dad said. this is like being back in Pakistan. there, we do not eat anything cold because that is where the viruses flourish. if it has not gone in the microwave or the air fryer or the oven, it […]
Nonfiction from Becky Robison
Photo: Rod Long I don’t miss coffee, but There’s something menstrual about the smell of coffee, thick and bitter as the beans are ground and brewed to liquid. I don’t drink coffee—only a splash when it’s drowned in something sweet. But I miss the smell of it. I miss the churn of machines and the […]
Nonfiction from Vikram Ramakrishnan
Photo: Mylene2401 Directions for a Child Immigrating to the US in the 1980s Watch Appa and Amma avert their eyes while telling Thatha and Paati that it will only be for a little while; play with your stuffed elephant while they argue; see Thatha shake his head and Paati tap her cane against the ground; […]
Nonfiction from Marina Flores
Photo: Cristian Newman Three Things She Said in Spanish 1 “¡Cierre la puerta! Cierre la puerta antes de que entren los pollos,” my blind, wheelchair-bound great-grandmother repeated from the kitchen table, a cup of lukewarm coffee snug in her flour-dusted fingers. The thing is, we didn’t own any chickens. Still, I admired how each vowel […]
Nonfiction from Jessica Barksdale
Photo: Fallon Michael This Decade I got married and stayed married. No small feat, trust me. The arc of second marriage, shorter, a meteor of desire and hope, and then, whoa! We are on that same damn spaceship we were on before, with different people. Hang on. If you dare. A flare of need, a flame […]
Fiction from Joseph Darlington
Photo: Taton Moïse Ratcatcher When they found the rat, Ula screamed. In fact, she wouldn’t stop screaming until the ratcatcher arrived. The girls giggled behind their hands. Anything that wound up the Puritan made them laugh. They all worked in the house of Pan and Pani Krolig, rich merchants in the port of Gdansk. Ula, […]
Poetry from Shome Dasgupta
Photo: Anelale Nájera Path of the Petals Soft thuds against beaten mud, horse’s hooves, crashing red breath, dying creek full of pebbles, eroded banks, irrigated souls travel: find paths—forgotten, years from now, the way the petals fall, sad and thinned, wiry branches, embrace air, gleam, Find nothing but nothing, nothing works well when not seeking, […]
Poetry from Amanda Little Rose
Photo: Dima Pechurin Stowaway There’s a hole in my sweater From when I got caught— On the bedroom door jamb— Trying to run, From every bad thing I’ve ever done. . . Amanda Little Rose has been a high school English teacher for five years, and graduated with a Bachelors of Arts and Science in […]
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