Well, Vagabonds. To say it’s been quite the year would be an understatement, but here we are. We re-launched. We’ve been blogging/reviewing/interviewing. We started a newsletter. We keep receiving incredible poetry/nonfiction/art from lovely writers and artists to publish. In the middle of all that, we’re reading, and then reading some more. Below, you’ll find some […]
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I could hear the bomb tick in your jacket. Between layers of leather, so close to chest. I wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t been pushed together on the train. You caught my bags and fall and I had to say thank you, fist making a zero around the metal pole. Now I eat from […]
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In June, we are inside out, mistaken for blooming. We steal apple blossoms, pluck them from low branches like burs from horsetails and braid them through our laces as we do between the trees. We snap stems into hairclips and paint our eyelids orange with pollen, our ankles gray from parched dust that floats on […]
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I want to set my skin on fire but I’m supposed to be at his apartment in an hour when i come across the dress. a long sleeve, four inches above the knee length floral patterned dress. it was hidden away in the back of my small dorm room closet it is hidden with the […]
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You know what? I like you. I confess this to you in English, staring at the back of your dreadfully empty chair. Yes, I write you notes. Page 1: In art class you told me that watercolor painting was less painting and more making mistakes and being proud of them. You have hairy arms and […]
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and we’re lying on the floor blanketed by a darkness that presses into every part of the room except the candles on the bookshelf an ellipsis of three small flaxen flames for a moment with the television muted it is just the two of us tenderness in chaos but with fresh tears the three little […]
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凉粉: cold noodles best served on hot summer days. I watch 妈妈 dip her hands into silver bowl, scoop starch, chase a village long-gone; and I want to hug her but her hands are tied, her apron is tied, her feet are tired – of standing on lands not made for legs bent under weight of loss […]
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[12:13AM] revolution is a self-taught language and i’ve always been multilingual. [1:38AM] some rot can be cut away with a fruit knife. [6:54AM] most mold cannot. [7:01AM] pick up. please. [7:10AM] there will be supermoons and moths with funny names to look forward to someday soon (atlas moth, comet moth, death’s-head hawkmoth, emperor gum moth, […]
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on some days i am not birthed on others i am lake ripples dragging my ring finger over your thigh these nights i dream in anaphora, on some moons i am catharsis on others i am dry, swaying tree branch you remind me of cinnamon & on some thoughts i cannot help but cry because […]
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i am tangled in the textured cracks of your cinnamon swirl palms so i crinkle up our poetry into an atom i am chipped nail polish painted over i am pushing the pebbles deeper into the earth with the heel of my knock-offs you are the dark splotches where the columns meet the ceiling, like […]
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What’s your background? Where are you from and when did you begin making work? I was born in San Francisco and we moved to San Diego when I was about 3 years old. My Mom is a public artist and my Dad works in biotech, and I grew up close to the beach with a […]
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“I feel like the story needs to mention what you did to end up in there. I mean, you went to prison so you obviously did something. If you don’t say what it was, it’s going to be a distraction for your readers.” For a long moment, you consider diving across the table and strangling […]
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We met by chance, along the dry riverbed, one long-shadowed, mosquito-muggy afternoon. The dusty bed coated my shoes as I kicked over logs and shale looking for fossils. I came to the river for everything I knew it had been, and to bury my own remnants there. I came upon her poking a dead bird […]
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Let me begin by saying I checked my mailbox three times a day while I was waiting for a package from Nostrovia! Press to arrive. In said package were the press’ three new chapbooks: “Make a Fist & Tongue the Knuckles,” “i can remember the meaning of every tarot card but i can’t remember what […]
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Good things come in pairs. I know that’s not the actual saying, but it certainly holds true of the beautiful bundle that is the Grimoire Series 1 from Sad Spell Press, Witch Craft Magazine’s publishing arm. The series includes grimoires, or chapbook-length poetry and prose from Jon-Michael Frank with Nostalgia Flower, and from Sarah Lyn […]
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Joseph Parker Okay and Elijah Pearson are phenomena. Not only are they talented and inventive writers (they are the authors of “my phone is about to die and i hope it takes me with it” and “a nt” respectively), they are champions of independent and alternative artists. They are the parents of not only Spy […]
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A History of Flamboyance is the sheer destruction of creation myths in violent shades shades of red. It considers the Church and Greek Mythology, but ultimately uses them as stepping stools to a greater, more honest truth. Justin Phillip Reed offers a collection of poems that feel like one long, satisfying and revelatory confessional marked […]
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“Ajebota” refers to the class difference between those who are wealthy and privileged versus “ajepako,” those who are not. It is a privilege to be able to follow the path you love, which, for Precious Okoyomon, is writing. She appropriates different texts and draws inspiration from various sources, including print and Internet. Her poetry compilation, […]
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rachel (editor in chief) [7:02 PM] NEW STAFF hello hello so we’re gonna play a get to know you game. i’m gonna run 3 questions past ya, okay? katie (interviews editor) [7:08 PM] Oh dang I like that a lot clair (social media manager) [7:08 PM] I also like this a lot! jessie […]
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There was something familiar about the cover of this book on first glance. Nadia Bozak’s collection of short stories, Thirteen Shells (House of Anansi), on the surface looks quite similar to the poster for the 2014 Richard Linklater film Boyhood. The former features a young girl lying in the grass facedown, one arm extended above […]
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Mel Cook is a visual artist currently living and working in Chicago, Illinois. She was born and raised in Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio in 2009 and attended Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois where she received her Master of Fine Arts in […]
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my lover is in my bed while I dizzy peruse night streets by full moonlight
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I think maybe I have stayed here too long amongst the new trees and cities. Think I have played the role stranger played my song inside my suit to re grow the skin of my kneecaps.
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STANDING @ A BROKEN PHONE-BOOTH W/ MONEY IN MY HAND BY PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS FROM THE CABLE GUY SOUNDTRACK no, i was not working on the southern alberta pipeline when i wrote this yes, my still-bird hands have assuredly gone soft but you do, in fact, desire a pops want of large pumpkin, middle pumpkin, […]
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i am sorry i thought you were a human-shaped vending machine i am sorry i forgot to take my body with me to your party i am sorry carnivorous plants eat animals because they feel alone i am sorry i feel alone when we are body to body in a room i am sorry i […]
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the dark of night is really just about 13,000 ravens spread across the sky lava is probably a good dancer my nations multiply
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figure 1: and you were talking about fucking on the beach (about having sex on the beach) and i was reading everything you said choking on sandwiches constantly choking on things going down the wrong way and coming up as something more filled with feelings than i meant to ever really feel and you were […]
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Concertina clavicles, you shrug and knitting needles escape flesh. Much genuflecting will follow. Alight, we shuck oysters and lick pearls. This is making love. This is the Northwest Passage. This is the loose thread that preludes hallucination. Imprisoned in nomenclature, you are unbridled and scathing. I wait for the word. One word and the sea […]
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meteor showers are akin to childbirth disasters waiting to happen a blinking vessel a product of snowflakes splitting blood interpreted as fingerpaint kissing the unturned cheek
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hoping to be more intimate with myself & otherpeople open|shut muted exchanges
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mood: anxious mood: waiting for your friend at the bus station mood: wandering aimlessly while eating a Cliff bar mood: “are you looking for Transit or Rail?” mood: soldiers in camouflage hovering mood: that aren’t traveling mood: getting too hot from wearing a jacket you don’t want to take off and lose mood: afraid of […]
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It was the month of photoshoots and diagnoses: your skull is shaped like schizophrenia and you need to rest.
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The first time I heard one of Franny Choi’s poems was a beautiful accident. It was senior year and I was driving home from my last day of Spoken Word Club. In my sentimentality and premature nostalgia I made a YouTube queue of recent popular poems. When Franny Choi’s “Pussy Monster” came on, I was […]
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Wednesday, September 21, 2016 9:36 PM Yuna Winter hi jessie !! i am home and sitting down, i just thought of u and wanted to let u know i am here hi !! Jessie Knoles hello!!!! how are you? Yuna Winter hii i am well !! a little sleepy but very good how are you Jessie […]
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Marlena Chertock’s debut poetry collection, “On that one-way trip to Mars,” is both warm and chilling, covering not only the expanse of the solar system but also of human emotions and experiences. It is a complete balance of history, science, medicine, and the nature of humanity. All of these areas of life affect each other. […]
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Megan Falley is in a word: sharp. Her poems have a sting to them that stays and her voice could silence a room. She is water running too hot in the best way. In addition to touring and teaching an online writing course called “Poems That Don’t Suck,” she is the author of three collections of […]
Read moreShe’s a self-proclaimed bruja, possibly a real actual pirate, a bookseller, and a nationally recognized spoken word poet who’s part of the 2015 National Poetry Slam championship winning team. Melissa Lozada-Oliva embodies all of these titles and can be found juggling them masterfully in Boston. She’s previously been published in Electric Cereal, Sidelines, Microchondria, and […]
Read moreI like to fall sometimes. I like to see the blood. When it flows from my pores into rivers, dams, and streams- like velvet currents of rage and sorrow. I am open like a wound, raw and tender.
Read moreYou used to grope weather forecasts from my throat, beg me to say “I love you” with the subtitles on. and I hoped no children came from our union, in fear that I would birth late-night infomercials alone. We were thing and owner, watching, changing without a chance. —– Hannah Cohen is in her mid-20s, […]
Read morei. & i once knew a Truthi swallowed it whole after we fuckedhow it crept thru on the down low,real slick,thick & heavy & embarrassing.love looked at me & exhaledgushed a song out of their mouth all“didn’t u like it?”i wanted to say it was all i had to live on.instead i lingered in the […]
Read moremy white willow name is doctor, creatorof cold sheets, levee raiser as i kisscheek & child, i am softer in my ownhands, but hard as light parsed through a man’s lens to empty cement giants and husk men i have left retrograding, i am sorryunder my heel: rainwater, my toe: typhooni am all weight, all heat — […]
Read moreif i am dead, then you are dying and we both have no recollection of a hard face-full of linoleum tile. if i was a drink, i’d be drunk; we are singing hymns from our cross-legged pew days. me, running my heel up the inside of your thigh. we, pretending we’re alive because we’re flesh […]
Read morein red season, my teeth hang off hingesand i’m tonguing door stops with myknees staked into the linoleum untilyou are home again.you loved me once before i knew whata past tense was and netted myself ina set of skeleton keys, that is my body,i say; i say it — my body is hereyou loved me […]
Read moresometimes, i still feel the heat of every hand that’s wandered across my body. shaking always shaking, earthquake veins, an uncertainty in the world, stepping on the ledge and looking straight down, neck tingling at a ninety degree
Read moremum’s polka-dotted apron would be stained brown and yellow; a child would peer at the strange orange universe inside a yolk and a crow would search for treasure inside empty egg shells lounging in the sun.
Read more& so i climbed the fig tree in my grandparent’s backyard, so i sat there the entire summer of my sixteenth year, ate nothing but figs – unripe, overripe, hard, soft, juicy, sweet, sticky, cracked open like my […]
Read moreHelen Robertson‘s collages encourage us to look at the world in an entirely different way, to see each other and the space between us as layered instead of separate, colors pooling and building to build a reality maybe none of us can see all at once. It made us feel thoughtful, and inspired, and connected. […]
Read moreOur mother named you after a lighthouse keeper from a book she read once and I always wondered, when she told me that, if she thought you would be her salvation because it certainly seemed that way with how she spent those hours secluded in her room talking to you on the phone while I […]
Read moreObsession is something that happens to people who aren’t so together. You have a full time job. Forty hours, on the nose. A four-door sedan—moderate, comfortable. You sit in rush hour for forty minutes, both ways, every day. You eat four meals, usually. Your life is full of four. This. That. You aren’t obsessed. You […]
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Hannah Kreitzer’s art tells stories that have been woven into the fabrics of the Earth, but often get forgotten as we move our attention from the cell phone to the laptop. Her sketches celebrate the bare bones of humanity–something deep and instinctual. She reminds us that at some point, we were not so separate from […]
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VAGABOND CITY 