Poetry from Joshua Torrence

Poetry from Joshua Torrence

Photo: Kevin Wenning Love Song The boy pulled the boy out of the tree. Dragged him out by his ankles, kicking And wild, clinging to the dead bark Where he had slept for ten thousand years. But hunger. But thirst. But tongue, dry As a midwinter day. The boy pulled the boy Into his arms. […]

Poetry from Beth Gordon

Poetry from Beth Gordon

Photo: Parrish Freeman (Invertebrate) (Damage) Resist swallowing. The cells beneath your tongue are thick with seraphim. They will slide answers between your teeth. Cavities are collateral damage. Follow the surgeon’s voice through the invertebrate circle of circles. The ouroboros is just another …………………………………..lost snake in this scenario. A pilot without brakes. Follow all instructions: at […]

Poetry from Réka Nyitrai

Poetry from Réka Nyitrai

Photo: Morgan Petroski Wild flowers This morning I tried to count the bees that live inside my head. I tried to figure out why I feel loneliest surrounded by people. Then, I imagined being a ghost, carrying flowers to the graves of my loved ones. Flowers with puckered lips. Flowers with teeth. Flowers that bite […]

Poetry from Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

Poetry from Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

Photo: Bruno AZADI tomorrow it is november & tell me when the october sun sets one last time, you will open our windows. we will do everything we were not once allowed to do: eat gheimeh with bare hands, drowsily sing love poems we’d make up on the spot. dance barefoot under the broken, flickering […]

Nonfiction from Katie M. Zeigler

Nonfiction from Katie M. Zeigler

Photo: Sophie Laurent Papier-Mâché Moai He said he’d made them with his hands and his brain, as if the two were owners of the same small business. I was anticipating a tool shed, or a series of small pinch pots arranged on a wooden shelf, so I curled the excitement at the back of my […]

Nonfiction from Moisés Delgado

Nonfiction from Moisés Delgado

Photo: Aperture Vintage Preparing for the End of the World It is 2012 and the world is ending. New York is underwater, the earth is splitting below LA’s feet, and here in Omaha, Nebraska, the sky is dark and touching ground—skyrocketing cars out of this orbit, untethering chain link fences, splintering our home open. But […]

Nonfiction from Liza Olson

Nonfiction from Liza Olson

Photo: Kati Sidewalk Sprout I don’t want to write about a scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment because there wasn’t one, or only just one. I don’t want to focus on the pain of not fitting a mold I was never going to fit, or give the trans portrayal that’s expected, because the pain of making the transition, for […]

Fiction from Lillie E. Franks

Fiction from Lillie E. Franks

Photo: Danika Perkinson The Encyclopedia of Endings – And they lived happily ever after. – And she returned to her old town and her old life, where she finally realized that, wide as the world is, sometimes the grass is greenest right where you started off. – So he skipped away, jumping from one planet […]

Fiction from Jennifer Lai

Fiction from Jennifer Lai

Photo: William Warby Portrait of a Normal Nuclear Family As with last Sunday, and the Sunday before that, and the Sunday before that, the husband and wife are shopping for toothpaste. It’s one of the few activities where they are civil to each other. If there’s anything that annoys the husband more than the wife […]

Fiction from Karly Noelle Abreu White

Fiction from Karly Noelle Abreu White

Photo: Them Holmes Sea Born William was gone, which meant it was time for the sisters to get to work. He seemed to run their every day and hour when he was present, but as soon as he left, it was like the spell was broken. They were a team again. The sisters were Ida […]