VAGABOND CITY

SELF PORTRAIT AS A LONE MIDNIGHT STAR OR A EULOGY FOR BESTIARY by NOME, EMEKA PATRICK

• There is uproar at the back// of this poem //which = i am a roaring chariot//= there is a tragedy// in this prologue // •• This story begins from a place of bloodlustgave my body to a butterfly or she gave// her body to me// an agreement sparkled with a matchstick// affection first prayed […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 30

CALENDARS by ELIZABETH THERIOT

Time and its contradictions. Wasted time. Its dreaded passing. How can I use or save it more efficiently? Time preservationist. The soft rotted time of forest floors. Photographs and boxes of mementos. Everything is time-sensitive. I am time sensitive. One night during the first few weeks of my current relationship our watches sat side by […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry

I WAS NAMED AFTER SOMEONE ELSE by EMILY LAVRADOR

Emily Rose Lavrador December 24th We would wait to put up stockings Until all cake had been eaten Because it was her birthday first I would kneel on scraped knees And hear my cousin talk of color, strength, volume Peel up the skin of his wiser words and drape the film over the cantankerous crab […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry

FROM TOP TO ENDING by MSW

bass boomin shhhhhrrrrrrttt soft tires on pavement chhht, a layered clap & snare from behind me breaths of a nigga behind me, getting closer exhaling to my right off footsteps in the grass & dirt, & one sharp scuff from me sidestepping a stroller steel lock & chain aluminum fencing soft screechin the pressure of […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry

THE HOUSE WITH TWENTY THREE ROOMS by AMRITA CHAKRABORTY

you are always searching for yourself in every reflective surface. now turn and face it. the absence of what you haunted, late at night when you hoped he slept like a petal, a cast off shade moved from room to room. running your hand over every door. you want to be a blessing but you’ve […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry

SUMMER RAINSTORM by ADIRA BENNETT

dedicated to S.B. and L.D. you are my favorite aching summer rainstorm: dewdrop fingers, sugarcane mouth, the valley flooding sweet and deep. you sing all the salt from the sea of my skin. us, our tangled driftwood bodies, merging river limbs flowing home, home, home. Adira Bennett (pseudonym of E.K.) is an artist, writer, and […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry

THE CHARGES AGAINST US by BETSY HOUSTEN

The box of dry Frosted Flakes at 4 AM is not the first indignity. All night we are chained together, a line of delinquent ducklings going in and out of cages, pressing fingers on the glass, reciting our numbers, staring at the camera. Guards bark: Face forward. Turn to the side. Don’t smile. Toward morning, someone calls my […]

Everything, Issue 30, Poetry, Prose

I TRAPPED YOU IN A VINCE GUARALDI TRIO SONG by SPENCER SILVERTHORNE

I dusted my father’s old Bose CD-player. It was once white but now it has yellowed like tintype. Do you remember seeing ads for these blocks on the back of PARADE magazines that came with the Sunday paper? No? I guess your family only subscribed to commercial-free periodicals and only listened to jazz. You did […]

Art, Everything, Issue 29

VAGABOND CITY interviews ALYSSA MOORE

Where are you from? Columbus, OH What are your hobbies? I’m usually creating something, photography, dance, and I’m always up for trying something new! What kind of dance have you done? I did Jazz and lyrical in high school and then I choreographed in an organization called Ayo at Cedarville University. When did you start […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 29

THE GUIDE TO BEING MEXICAN-AMERICAN FOR DUMMIES by KRYSTAL NAVARRO

i. your american mother will unintentionally white-wash you. when orientation for kindergarten begins, her first instinct will be to put a little ‘x’ in the box marked ‘white’ for your ethnicity because her translucent skin burns in the sun, and she forgets that yours tans. when your father weaves stories of el chupcacabra and la […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

THE LEVITY OF TRUTH by GRACE LAU

There really is no good time to tell your mother you’ve never liked boys. Closets do not relinquish their grips easily but I have always instinctively hated dresses. So when my mother asked me about boyfriends again as we wrenched the tails from luscious prawns and cracked their shells with our teeth, I offered the […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

EMILY AS SHE SPENT THE DAY NOT LOOKING AT ME by DARREN C. DEMAREE

I am thawed. Deep in winter, I am warm for Emily & she knows that. The sky stays stark & she knows that as well. I am thawed & I still invite her to walk across me. She prefers the shore most days. I can only be the lake & most of my invitations aren’t […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

CADENCE by DANIELLE ELEANOR

your name tastes like the ocean in my mouth the highest arch of green smoothed by sun then white foam fizzing out snapping bubbles kiss my ankles you go on for miles if I think about you and nothing else I can taste you whenever I want my lungs s […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

I’M PAINTING A HATRED OF YOU by ARIELLE TIPA

my twin, my twitch – prettily you demonstrate your lazy eye the rococo latticework of your scapula – you are most beautiful in braille my hammock, my summer my opium glitch, my tambourine din i’ve been cat-tongued in places you have never lived in tantrums you have never nursed you are killing me to death […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

LEAVING THE LIGHTS ON by LIZ BRUNO

Sometimes I suspect I am nothing but a hotel. My mother stays in my lips. My father sleeps in my eyes. My last lover stumbles around With my flowery bathrobe flung on. Yes, there are guests lurking In every floor of this high rise, Even the uninvited ones. My ex-husband twists around my intestines. His […]

Everything, Issue 29, Poetry

AUGUST by SARAH M. ZHOU

August presses against me like something thick and heavy, sweet perfume clinging to air swollen with humidity. Thunder roiling in clouds like wet wool, apricots ripening and rotting in a blue bowl on the kitchen counter. A shimmering haze, thick enough to taste like herbs on your tongue, with bones weighty and bruised like thudding […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 28

I BREAK THE WISHBONE AND DISCOVER THERE IS NO MAGIC by SAMUEL J FOX

I am supposed to be drunk. I am supposed to be a frat boy/super fly/machismo extraordinaire. I am supposed to be flirty, confident, and sexy especially after four shots of tequila. I no longer want to perform this pantomime of bodily aggression. I no longer want the world to be a stage on which I […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

I’M CRAVING RAMEN AGAIN by DYNAS JOHNSON

if i close my eyes and imagine something warmer than this 30 degree weather, something closer to my family than just being in the same city, with memories more tangible than pictures, i imagine ramen. walking back from my last class, all i can think of is a bowl of steaming noodles, eggs, and chopped […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

FEMME FRIENDS by CHRIS BARTON

polka dot thunderstorm red convertible we curb parked by the graveyard to laugh at the phallic shadows of cement why not go drink a bottle of red wine on gravel patios just to sit under string lights & feel consumed Chris Barton‘s work has appeared in Hobart, Potluck, Funhouse, Metatron, & elsewhere. He makes lattes […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

FLOODLIGHTS by LILLIAN SICKLER

evening played the radio soft, soft as daffodil blinking. we rocked in the solace of rosy oven lights the steps to our dance shook magnets within our bodies cold metal pushing us up against each other the vibration of our collision ran over the counter filled the bread box and our shoes. flooding without much […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

A BUMPER STICKER THAT SAYS “ABOUT TO BE LONELY FOR AN INDETERMINATE AMOUNT OF TIME” by CHANDLER VEILLEUX

Months of miles back on the diving end of the highway with the slow jam of July sizzling out. Lost: home. The memory lasts and lasts. Traded one black hole for another cavern: sidewalks, soda pop, polka dots, crushed nips – cracked and waning underneath the squeak and scroll of an antique strut. Phone cradles […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

MAMAMA by MARI SANTA CRUZ

low sugar draining her cryptic stare a quiet slumber swallows her face drooping over half eaten rice and beans lips parting warmth needing air grandpa slides the window open dripping soured unease wind unveils my fate tenderly a prophecy rooted in her silence you will remember the taste of mangoes but not the sight of the […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

NORTH CAROLINA 1998 by CHESTINA CRAIG

I have these memories my mother & I bleary eyed in your southern kitchen, the cicadas chorus as you offer us toast waking us jet-lagged already dressed in your coffin, that bathrobe. I don’t know if it was really there then but I dress you in it every time you are alive in my head […]

Everything, Issue 28, Poetry

ART by ANNABELLE KANG

Hands sticky from whiskey I almost drink my paint water Reminding me of another shitty attempt at art On my part Art confuses me I went to the Guggenheim Museum And saw some boring Agnes Martin paintings Just lines and dull colours I left the museum feeling dumb and naive Wondering if I can make […]

Art, Everything, Issue 27

NICOLE LANE interviews DAVID J. MCMILLAN

How do your surroundings influence your style and practice? I’ve been very lucky to live in some super inspiring cities over the years. Bristol, Berlin, Belfast (I only seem to live in cities beginning with B) Each city has had an amazing illustration community to connect with. Feeling part of something like that really helps […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 27

ART HISTORY by OLLIE DUPUY

The first of these is the NAIL FILE, the very one Grandmother Virginia took across the ocean with her from Puerto Rico to New York, to her aunt in the candy shop with striped windows. Virginia wouldn’t finish high school until she was in her fifties, but she knew how to raise the file two […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 27

THE DROWNING CHILDREN by OLLIE DUPUY

SET THE STAGE: the Drowning Children + me in a habitat of natural childhood: THE J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, where models stand pinned in glitzy dead butterflies, wings spread, a graveyard of history. We are young, and the net age between us and the statues could cradle our grandparents in its palms. We are young, […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

[ALBANY] by GABRIELLE LESSANS

scrolling trees hit mirror light purple in the […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

OUTSIDE MORRISONS by LOTTE LEE LEWIS

Mostly you saw him from beyond the reach of a tempered glass screen, his large hands stretched across the dashboard like the skin of an animal drawn tight. Years after your arrival you christened her birthplace the Texas of the UK: caravans clattering the flatlands like limbs, dawn a dream caught between sleep and waking, […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

INSTRUCTIONS ON PERFORMING THE POEM, “FAILURE IS RADICAL” by SARAH SUMMERSON

think about your body, is it in the room? enter your body, leave it in front of their eyes. introduce yourself, prepare them for loss. remind them, failure is radical. forget them, introduce yourself to loss. Leave. remember that your quivering is only a bow string. […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

SISTER by EMILY NORTON

a glass of wine under starlight. well not starlight but LED feels the same. a glass of wine tastes like rubbing alcohol. i don’t tell you. i swallow. cheers. we are growing. glowing. how many years older are we. enough to pour out our insides and realize we’re in your house. house not bedroom. you […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

BROOKLYN, KINGSTON AND THROOP by LINDSEY SIFERD

when i move to the city you do not follow the subway goes by and sometimes i catch the smell of newly cut grass the only bars i go to are ones you went to in 1997 the only heartbeat that shadows mine is yours here is a broken glass here is a phone call […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

MAZATLAN by ADRIAN ROJAS

I’m thinking about how every time I do it it never feels like anything how A1 sauce is good with fries and the nothingness of a body I’m inside now and i’m sitting and clicking And reading and forgetting A memory is everything, a pressure cooker rings two-thousand warnings and my torso is a radio […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

HOTPANTS by RIKKI ANGELIDES

when I drive I often think in fiction but this type of fiction isn’t twist-tied up with a pink bow it doesn’t smile at wild monkeys chomping on buttercups in fact it’s never seen a horse, sheep, goat, llama, or monkey voluntarily consume buttercups it’s disgruntled fiction that can tip […]

Everything, Issue 27, Poetry

SPRING DAY: AN EKPHRASIS by TESS LEE

thin light unraveled you. as the snow fell on the train tracks, i stood in close opening and gently pressed cheek to ground so i could hear your breathing and the boy moving from one full room to the other while chasing his friend up the staircase – a body that flitted like moon phases […]

Art, Everything, Issue 26

NICOLE LANE interviews NANNA PRIELER

Nicole Lane: Where are you from? When did you begin illustrating? Nanna Prieler : I was born in a small, idyllic village in the mountains of southern Austria. Growing up in this traditional kind of fairytale world made me a very romantic person who has been obsessed with drawing ever since. I went away to an art […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 26, Prose

THINGS I WISH I COULD TELL MY FATHER by AKI W.

things i wish i could tell my father i. stop haunting my dreams. i don’t want you there because it feels so comfortable when you’re around and i hate being comfortable around something you did. ii. why did you do that to my sisters but never me? why was i so different? iii. all my […]

Everything, Issue 26, Poetry, Prose

ON MY GENDER BEING ILLEGAL by RONNY FORD

i never could taste the bitterness of decaf coffee until the barista at the cafe on the first floor of the MSU library handed me a cup with the word “ma’am” attached to it, and now every sip of every coffee i take fills my teeth with grounds that taste nothing of the robust heartiness […]

Everything, Issue 26, Poetry

GOODBYE, HARRY DEAN STANTON by GUINOTTE WISE

A few missed payments and see what happens The Repo Man takes you away from that bar on Melrose where you sang with abandon. Country songs. Old jazz. Your movies were pure. You, yourself, were you. What will the stone say? Maybe, “I come from a broken home and I realize it’s the rule rather than […]

Everything, Issue 26, Poetry

ALL SCATTERED PARTS by TAMARA L. PANICI

I tag every piece of you I can see and not see when I run out of ink, I prick out my own warm blood. you grin and I dabble myself all over your boxed life, stain your breath and call it my breath, smudge your memories and name them my memories. I say isn’t it so wonderful to be […]

Everything, Issue 26, Poetry

TOGETHER/MESS by K.E. BELL

because i can spread my fingers to reach her southern skies stop reaching, i think bloom sweet in the space of my ribs like spicy flowers in the night amidst a summer’s mist hold me tight no, tighter like the black breeze wetting our windows make fire lick my cheek in exchange for little sweet tastes […]

Everything, Issue 26, Poetry

BERLIN by UMANG KALRA

Emptiness encased in skies that flutter like fleeting fissures of light through crystal, piercing into me I told myself that cities are built of bricks and stone and concrete poured into holes in the earth, ugly forms of symmetry painted over and over and over and over again until our eyes can glimpse at its […]

Everything, Poetry

THINGS YOU CAN TOUCH AND PROVE by ALEXIS DIANO SIKORSKI

there are the things you can touch and prove like when your tongue goes raw after eating two bags of salt and vinegar chips or when you accidentally bite into a jalapeño chunk you didn’t know was in your queso and reach for your soda but it only makes it all much, much worse there […]

Everything, interview, WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

KATIE CLARK interviews KRISTIN CHANG

Katie: One of my favorite things about your work is how experimental and intentional you are with different forms. The visual aspect of your poems is always a striking element of the individual pieces, and the way they build on each other is so strong in your suites. How do you approach a piece? How does form happen […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, issue 25, Prose

MESSIER 83 by CHRISTINE NO

My Own Private Idaho: Tuesday night at the New Beverly Cinema. Five-dollar double feature, don’t remember the second one. Gummy seats, sticky floor and nobody there but us (and the) creeps. You, in love with the girl who stood you up: The thrift shop dress and vintage nickname. Me, last minute sub, extra ticket— Footwork […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, issue 25, Prose

CATHEDRAL by CHRISTINE NO

The West Oakland train stop; defunct and tagged standing sentry between a collapsed overpass and a neighborhood gone to shit. You hopped the chain-link easily and breezed across the hill and dale of broken concrete, the stubborn flora crowding up and in between; moving earth like tiny fault lines, smashing plates together, splicing ground to […]

Everything, issue 25, Poetry

RECIPE FOR MORNINGS AFTER by ELI BINKOVITZ

Whip egg whites, expectations, preheat an oven, carefully cultivate delicate friendships with belligerent drunks. Add laughter by the teaspoons, desperation by cups, and apathy in gallons. Freeze and thaw. Partially defrost. Chill for hours. Pour in buckets of sugar, cinnamon, precious time and effort. Fuck it up; do it over. Scrape off what sticks to […]

Everything, issue 25, Poetry

SIGNS by DAVID-MATTHEW BARNES

Collapsed into you outside of baggage claim in Pittsburgh. We sandwiched at Primanti Bros. where you picked at the bread, said you were already home sick, jet lagged, but a promise was a promise and Pennsylvania had taken its toll on me; the ice kept on short circuiting the hot wires of my soul. You […]

Everything, issue 25, Poetry

HOLDEN CAULFIELD SUCKS by ANNIE MCQUADE

but i too wish to be the catcher in the rye when i grow up. and by that i mean i want to protect everyone that is not me want to place everyone else in a bubble away from brokenness. by this i mean that the world is broken and so am i, and i […]

Everything, issue 25, Poetry

CRAVE by KATIXA ESPINOZA

stretch the hours before giving in ignore the pounding / lump in my throat cross my eyes pretend it never happened suck it all up this is how i want to look i hold the sinking flesh with cusped hands see myself spread thin count how much it takes to burn an entire body / […]