today my coworker Brian touches me without my permission & I imagine rending his head from his body with my bare hands / I can blame the impulse on a customer / Joe always asks what scary thing I’ve done to myself today / I always answer in movie titles // in The Exorcism of […]
Read moreI WILL DIE CHAINED TO AN ESPRESSO MACHINE by EMILY O’NEILL
I’m lying in bed playing dead lizard because it’s all dry where rain should happen & cinder where we didn’t put ourselves out. That’s the legacy. We forgot to inconvenience ourselves. Don’t know
Read moreWARP by RACHANA HEGDE
Teacher asks me to speak, asks me to sigh, asks me to be dramatic & shy (please?). Nobody ever says please. In my mind a crane is shifting and juddering to a halt. I’m the girl sprawled breathless, drawing myself nude.
Read moreEXORCISM by RACHANA HEGDE
Mama binds my wounds slipshod, drippy-wet, I watch crow overbalancing, crow flailing, crow falling off the wires. In the dining room, Papa rubs at the sangria stains. The guests calcify under my gaze & I trip, dissonant
Read moreSOFABED by CAITLIN BAIRD
HAMPTON STREET, 12:00 AM (FIGURE IN A MIRROR IN TWO PARTS) by LAUREN ELMA FRAMENT
after Jeremy Radin the unfading birthmark / the right breast, tender cicatrice & ache / the organs who refuse motherhood / the knees, swollen like heavy balloons / the hips, purposeless gates / the thighs, two fumbling giants / the hands, deserts without oasis or mirage / the crescented knuckle that sewed itself / the […]
Read moreSOUTH WILLOW STREET, 7:11PM (BODY) by LAUREN ELMA FRAMENT
i didn’t know my stomach would become a wallet for my fingers to pickpocket
Read moreHAMPTON STREET, 5:21 PM (SELF-PORTRAIT AS SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT) by LAUREN ELMA FRAMENT
i built a glass box with a tornado inside.
Read moreHORIZON by JAYY DODD
You will find roads familiar and vacant, daylight obscured by furrowing sky, some congested covering will billow from an apocalyptic breeze. Roadside civilizations will trace piecemeal monuments to all you knew as home. You’ll be passenger to your flesh, and it will guide you, traverse
Read moreSPRING DESIDERATUM by ATREYEE GUPTA
Every day the world chooses a darker turn, a crueler path. Apathy seems the best course against this indecipherable savagery, this unspeakable calamity. Like a turtle, I want to crawl within my shell and disappear. So I take myself to the mountains in springtime where its verdurous raiments can soothe my rattled nerves. Here the […]
Read moreA WAKE by CASEY CLAGUE
Baby duck imprints a mother on the first thing he sees, would stream through a lake with a goose, bear, human single dad. Glazed-eye after- noon, red tide. Last seen
Read moreART by MAGGIE CHIANG
THE VAGABOND TAPES: calm
> so you had a long and hard day at work. >> and you want to sit back. >>> rewind. >>>> and relax.
Read moreBethany Mary on “Manic Depressive Dream Girl” by Naadeyah Haseeb
Trigger warning: bipolar, theme of suicide “Hypothesis: I will not go crazy because I am not truly insane. Just a spectacular fuck up,” is the bitterly hopeful premise of Naadeyah Haseeb’s Manic Depressive Dream Girl. This unconventional chapbook, in which the boy and girl are alternately comfortable and wild, explores the depth a relationship can […]
Read moreTHE VAGABOND TAPES: last summer
> you’re aching. >> let it breathe. >>> let it wail. >>>> let it out.
Read moreLesley LeRoux on “Howling at the Moon” by Darshana Suresh
“How much can you tell me about love?” asks the bird in Darshana Suresh’s opening poem, “Birds on a Power Line,” from Howling at the Moon (Platypus Press). “Enough to fill my breakfast bowl,” answers the other. In her debut poetry collection, 19-year-old Suresh has more than enough to share about love, loss and survival […]
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THE VAGABOND TAPES: Aching
> you’re aching. >> let it breathe. >>> let it wail. >>>> let it out.
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THE VAGABOND TAPES: Black Power
> so you’re frustrated about the situation of black people in america + feel helpless. >> and then you listen to the revolution waking up. >>> it’s already started. and we shall overcome.
Read moreA WORK IN PROGRESS
COMING SOON
reviews + blog posts + interviews wanna get your book reviewed/your thoughts into the void? email us > vagabondcityliterary@gmail.com
Read moreMOOD: DARK
FEATURED ARTIST: Niki Gaines
ABOUT NIKI Niki Gaines is an outgoing, food and craft beer enthusiast who thoroughly enjoys adventure, traveling the world, and exploring new cultures. Enamored with photography, Niki finds herself wrapped in the abstract mind of the darkroom passionately engaged with experimental processes. Her work involves issues around construction of identity and the loss of such. Niki recently […]
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WHEN I FIRST WENT INTO THE OCEAN I | Jasmine Sierra
felt like a magic woman, magic mouth of the Pacific calling to me ’til she could kiss me on my feet. Asked me how I gone so long without lettin’ these feet come to cozy up with the swelling of the shoreline and I said too long ’cause I almost
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ART | Vanya Truong
INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST LUCIA PASQUALE: What are you currently reading? VANYA TRUONG: I am currently reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It’s very strange and slightly haunting. I’m also re-reading Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre because I was feeling odd about myself again. Both books are very emotionally overpowering for me, so I […]
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MOTION SICKNESS | Torii Johnson
the politics of getting noticed in New York straddle borders and sit next to me on park benches. I keep headphones on so they won’t touch me with their Hey what’s your name but that man is still beating one off on a park bench. there are still parts of me that want to be […]
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VENUS FADING FROM THE SKY | N. L. Shompole
1 I take flight at dusk, pink and indigo sky stretching each way into infinity. Blue wind over my skin I think of how the world came to be. In a dream last night I was a hummingbird in migration. A sudden storm and I was in descent, torn from the sky.
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THE ANATOMY OF A PIXIE GIRL DROWNING | Martina Dominique Dansereau
You have always loved the anatomy of a pixie girl drowning; from my salt- covered lips to the weeds in my lungs, you worshipped me as a false god. When we first met, the water was only just beginning to lap at the shores of my heart. I was thirteen; my eyes were still lit […]
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SHARK + GIRAFFE | Susannah Betts
DEGREES / OF / SEPARATION | Torii Johnson
I wasn’t even part of this — but it’s spread into everything like motor oil — stays around — I wonder what decides critical — sticky and forcefully there — I wonder who decides who gets a house — I want to know how much money they lost — to lose even more — what […]
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GIRL, INTERRUPTED | Martina Dominique Dansereau
Girl with mouth of river bled dry. Girl whose first blood comes from choking back words too big for her mouth. Girl with tightrope wrists and knife handles in her thighs. Girl like a wrecked car, rusted iron smile. Girl who swallows a sparrow heart and spits out the feathers. Girl and her razor-rimmed eyes. […]
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SAVE BLACK BODIES | aung.robo
DARK BEAUTY | Andiswa Onke Maqutu
“You are too black.” “I’m sorry.” The make-up artist filed through a brown palette of bottles of foundation in annoyed haste. Her purple tinted nails clawed at them and they clamoured over each other in protest. “I have all the colours here; toast, cappuccino, caramel, cocoa, mocha… even mahogany. But I don’t have your colour, […]
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EVERYTHING TO NOTHING | McKenzie Dial
I. The dash, scattered with photographs of the girls you had kissed, and me, sitting in the passenger seat, placing my cheeks on the chilly tempered glass, never wishing that one of those pictures might be of me. Your summer breath – popcorn hulls, jalapeño juice, tobacco leaves – all so close to my mouth, […]
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FAGGOT YOUTH | aung.robo
OPEN SEASON | Torii Johnson
People in the south have mouths that cradle their vowels like a hunter holds his gun. Don’t kiss in the car in case we get run off the road. Speak slow ‘round the molasses of their thoughts and savor the sound.
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LOOKING LOW | Susannah Betts
MEMORIES OF LOVING A GIRL WHO SANG THE SOUL ELECTRIC | Martina Dominique Dansereau
i. Her eyes caused earthquakes, tectonic plates colliding and sparks leaping from her gaze into mine when they crashed, inciting tremors beneath my skin. The way my synapses fired love letters from neuron to neuron to every part of my body until it tingled with love like a fever coursing hot- and-cold from her sly […]
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A Stonefruit | Clair Dunlap
TWO YEARS LATER I TELL HIM VERY CLEARLY TO STOP TALKING TO ME. I USE THE CONCISE PHRASES I DO NOT LIKE YOU AND I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU STOP TALKING TO ME I TELL HIM AND HE REPLIES AFFIRMATIVELY. I TELL HIM AND WHEN MY BOYFRIEND LEAVES THE KITCHEN AND HE […]
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ART BY ABBY CARON
SITA | Lakshmi Mitra
i. janaka loves me the way one loves a goddess, but not the way one loves a child. he says my hair is like a clear sky on a moonless night, my eyes are blooming with starfire, my skin is the bottled radiance of a setting sun. but i want him to say that he […]
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RITES OF AN OLD WAR | Sophia E. Terazawa
Imagine the struggle for interracial love as a series of group discussions, nothing more. Nobody shrieks and flies for the throat. Plates, unbroken. Ground rules. “Safe” space. Imagine that the interpersonal work against racism is at a round table, in a concert hall, within a forum. Nothing more. Curated. Conducted. Logged. To my mother, Angelina […]
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ODE TO MONTEREY BAY//OR// THE FIRST POEM THAT IS NOT ABOUT LOSS | Emily Alexander
the first poem without road sign poles, empty of direction. the first poem without missing teeth i know all about borrowed bodies. i was born landlocked, with a cup inside my chest, oceans deep. in california, the highway between my house and downtown traces the outlines of the pacific, both nervous bodies reaching, spooning, matching […]
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CEILING | Léna García
Palm trees and military barracks fade white from the sun, the way it was before they got here and plucked all the butterflies, like candles from cake, and rust red water poured into rivers mixing red dirt with ocean, forming clay, the kind I painted and sold on the sides of desert freeways. 1964. The […]
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I AM AN ATLANTEAN EFFORT ON MYSELF | Meryem Nuh
you do not know. i move from room to room. every morning. moistening my eyes. sucking in my belly. pruning my fingers in juice of mango. weathering my history on my forehead. the women in me want different things. breathing with my hair. rubbing honey cinnamon and shine of the moon on the inside of […]
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THIS WILL DESTROY YOU | Bethany Mary
My coworker asks me what I’m doing with my life, as if this is a question I know the answer to instead of one I ask myself every day. She also asks me why I don’t use my low reserves of energy to find a boyfriend. Through the haze of depression and chilling dreams, I […]
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SEPIA | Fortesa Latifi
looking back, everything is sepia to me now: the pills, the shaking, the undressing, your neck in the shadow of the lost night, the pills, your hair cut over the bathroom sink, the broken front door,
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ON OLD POTS AND NEW YEARS | Bee Walsh
Mama told me it’s important to cast a spell around nightfall on the first day of the New Year. Some years I forget & maybe those weren’t some of my best, but as the onions caramelize in the bottom of my oldest pot, I whisper some of the other secrets Mama told me about new […]
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VAGABOND CITY | ISSUE VII
This winter, we simmered. We became beings sunken beneath water, boiling. We became beings, warm and thinking, looking back. We were destroyed. Our cells were returned to the world as heat as we sat, invisible in our nothingness, floating or sinking or maybe being nothing at all, maybe just nothing, warmed, nothing, stripped, nothing, stunning […]
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SHARPIE ART | Amira Simon
A CONVERSATION WITH AN IMAGINARY FRIEND | Becky Yeker
What does it feel like to feel? It feels like the thoughts of every living person are inside of you, like they are thumping against the side of your head and they are reflecting off of your eyeballs like they are mirror images of yourself, even when they are not you. Does it feel like […]
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VAGABOND CITY 