Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival Fellowships is currently accepting registration fellowship applications from people who are not enrolled in a degree program with access to creative writing instruction or have had a book of poems published or accepted for publication by a United States press for their second annual poetry festival. To apply, submit 4–5 poems […]
Read moreWhere We Stay by Rebecca Stoner
Rebecca Stoner was born and raised in New York, and spent six years living in Chicago. An MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Newark, her work is forthcoming in the Black Warrior Review and Palindrome.
Read moreA Lack of Birds by Eric Cline
I had accepted that I would never see you againbefore you ever died. Still air, or was the fan turning?You asked what you were seeing when there was nothing to see.Animals at the end of your hospital bed, but whatkind? I have never been good at seeing what is not there,much less what is. A […]
Read moreSafety at the Knife’s Edge by Thistle Dunsmuir
Thistle Dunsmuir is a non-binary writer and editor from the West Coast of Canada. Their work focuses on themes of queerness and neurodiversity, celebrating and exploring their identities of autistic, non-binary, aromantic, and asexual. These identities provide them with a fresh perspective on the world, which they explore deeply in their works. They can be […]
Read moreNow Read This | April 2024
Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Crimson Stain: Poems Inspired by King’s letter from jail, Real Life & a Facet of Blood Diamond Culture by Dee Allen In Winter 2007, a full-time college student broke 7 years of writer’s block by writing a new poem, generated while reading Martin Luther King’s Letter […]
Read moreIn Review: Dominant Genes by SJ Sindu
I was interested in this hybrid collection because of its fluid approach towards the concepts of gender and genre. I have a cursory understanding of some of the “inherited rage of South Asian women” that Sindu writes of, as I grew up in Southeast Asia and have some knowledge of associated cultural experiences and expectations, so […]
Read moreSteel Birds: An Interview with Noor Nabulsi
Through a poignant series of photographs, artist Noor Nabulsi’s Steel Birds pairs colorful scenes of camaraderie with somber monochrome moments in an effort to explore “themes of femininity, sisterhood, and cultural identity” in relation to the Palestinian exile experience. As she explains, “the two parts of this series not only delve into the diasporic connection to resistance, […]
Read moreBlack Salt, part 1 by Lace Franklin
IMAGE NO. 1: Alt Text: Picture of the beach. At the top center of the image is an airplane that is about to land at the airport. Directly under it is a black sun that is rising over some hilly islands that block the view into the open ocean. At the bottom of the image […]
Read moreMoments Before Adulthood by Beth Brown
I think I am drinking spit. I can feel it on my tongue, just that bit thicker than water, sliding down my throat like egg white. Gabrielle is banging her palm on the sticky table, repeating the start of a drinking chant we all know, in a tone that is slightly too aggressive for 7am. […]
Read moreOpportunities for Artists and Writers | March 2024
Small Harbor Publishing is accepting chapbook submissions for The Marginalia Series. Chapbooks should be written by traditionally marginalized writers, be between 20-40 pages and include a title page, table of contents, and a list of acknowledgments for previously published poems (the collection as a whole must be unpublished). Deadline: March 31st. Hub City Press is […]
Read moreNow Read This | March 2024
Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators The Sadness of Shadows by Lola Ancira (translated by Juana Adcock) Lola Ancira’s third short story collection, and the first to be translated into English, gives voice to those who have been marginalised and condemned to live life in the shadows of lunacy, nostalgia, loss and […]
Read moreAn Interview with JC Alfier
Occupying the tenebrous space between dreams and memories, the collages of JC Alfier (they/them) are at once intimate and mysterious; universal and obscure; conscious and unconscious. Evoking both the ubiquity and elusiveness of Jungian archetypes, this poetic opposition between the known and the unknown is brought to mind in La ville qui regarde II – The […]
Read moreIn Review: Periodic Boyfriends by Drew Pisarra
The sonnet, as a traditional poetic form, has often been used by writers as a means for depicting and paying homage to a beloved. And, given the enduring presence of the sonnet within poetry, it should be no surprise then that many (from Renaissance writers to the Romantics to our contemporaries) have used, broken, and […]
Read moreImmaculate Mary by Livvy Linz Winkelman
A man of God told me once that self-mythologizing is the greatest sin. He asked me what I prayed for and I could not answer, from my paper mouth. It became a fig tree, blossoming, rooting me in depth and height distractions. The fig tree was God but the tree was me but the tree […]
Read moreDon’t Swallow Me Whole by Thomas Kneeland
I can’t remember how long it’s beensince I’ve sung a whole song, painted a whole picture, written a poem wholeenough to make me love who I am & all the while, my throat is fullof broken notes small blue-winged swallows. They stab at flesh […]
Read more“An Interpretation of ‘Now That The Light Is Fading’ by Maggie Rogers” by Shaw Carey
It starts with crickets. We lie in the forest and she sings about colors. Silver and purple at twilight, rubies of emerald glowing. There is nothing to back her voice, only crickets. The words echo and the moon fills up her lungs. Sunlight comes in shafts during the day, she reminds us as we watch […]
Read moreElegy for the boy afraid to write queer poems by MJ Young
How could the moon have been likenedto cheese—wedge?—hardly appropriate.Possessing the delicacy of an orphanedeyelash, a demure sun-inspired stature,the moon is perfectly placed, not forced. Why was that easier to write than the title? It’s not that I’m bored of Ode to the Moonbut why would I read it when I can readOde to his Five […]
Read moreWelcome Catherine!
Some quick VC news to share: we have a new Art Editor! Catherine Gamero is an artist and designer based in South Florida. While away from her computer, she enjoys printmaking and collecting old books. If you’d like to submit art for publication consideration and be interviewed by Catherine about your work, you can get […]
Read moreIn Sickness & In Health by Audrey T. Carroll
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer […]
Read morei spent 3 hours by Maeve Vitello
watching a YouTuberdocument the history of Minecraft speedrunning. another day my date tells mea dream of studyingfilm archival workso she canpreserve porn. we go to a museumof postersand learn about a viral ad campaignthat predates my birth. i am transported. my primary partner describesan appalachian horror podcast i keep meaning to listen toand we watch […]
Read morePercoset Prescription, 11/16/23 by Ryan Clark
For now the sun cliche-like has risenin full view of my living. For now our cats lean and rub live-bodied my feetas light opens slow to the room where I feed them enough to help them remain.For now I forget slash set aside this need to close forever slash I mouth phrasesand none are for […]
Read moreNow Read This | January 2024
Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Yaguareté White by Diego Báez In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Baéz grew up in central Illinois as […]
Read moreIn Review: Surrogate Eater by Jen Yáñez-Alaniz
As compelling as the richly symbolic, saturated artwork that graces its front cover, Jen Yáñez-Alaniz’s admittedly slim (but no less emotionally packed) debut chapbook, Surrogate Eater, is one not to miss. Part-critique of the gendered roles expected of the speaker, part-reclamation of the speaker’s sexual identity, Yáñez-Alaniz’s chapbook is not so much a read but […]
Read more10.5 by Erica Peplin
A girl, let’s call her Fashion, invited me over to meet her hamster. The hamster lived in a large clear plastic box, like a large storage container, but it had no top. At first, this startled me. Where was the top? Then I remembered hamsters couldn’t fly. This hamster lived in its plastic house without […]
Read moreMirror God by Megan Xing
Lately I have stopped being able to recognize my face as a sum of its parts. When I stand in front of the mirror, pinching soft skin between accusatory fingers, the face that looks back is unrecognizable, each feature isolated like pieces of a disjointed puzzle. My reflection smiles at me and parts her lips, […]
Read moreIn the Alleys of Marrakech Collection by Kirsten Smith
Kirsten Smith is a photographer, writer, and travel addict who lives and works in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in (or will soon appear in) SPANK the CARP, Esoterica Magazine, JAKE the Magazine, and Cosmic Daffodil. Check her out on Instagram @the_wallflower_wanderer and Twitter @Kirsten_Wanders.
Read moreThe Green of Your Lungs by Shaw
After Alessia Di Cesare the pine trees stayed the same shade of green and the thing is that i love you again.it’ that it hangs in my throat until we have glitter on our feet and sand in our eyes.that it was me breaking sticks and watching you shoot arrows, that i tried to tell […]
Read moreFlamingo and In The Valley by Michal (Mitak) Mahgerefteh
Michal (Mitak) Mahgerefteh is an ESL poet and artist based in Virginia. She is the managing editor at Poetica Publishing, where she oversees the Miriam Rachimi Micro Chapbook Poetry Prize. Mahgerefteh has authored five poetry chapbooks, including In My Bustan, The Rising Song, What’s Left Behind, Field of Harps, and Sipping Memories. Her latest collection, FishMoon, will be released in 2024. In addition to […]
Read moreIn Which I Transition Without Any Medical Intervention by Jasper Kennedy
after Jenny Tiskus The first day with the stethoscopethe thought of eyes catchingon my buzzed head and refusingto let me listen to the child’s heartbeatlands like a winch hook behind mysternum, reeling me up and awayfrom the rancid culture simmeringin parental guts before I can evenpress the tiny belly, find the hurt.Years on I am […]
Read moreReturn by Dingzhong Ding
Dingzhong Ding (he/him) is a writer from Shanghai, China. His work has been recognized by the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and Yale Young Writers’ Workshop. You can find him on Instagram @ddzhxng.
Read moreMy Childhood Monsters by Louie Anne
Content warning: Mentions of sexual harassment and rape. No one warned me about boys. In Grade 6, I was ill-prepared when a group of them took my backpack and tossed it in the boy’s bathroom. My textbooks and notebooks were wet from whatever was leaking under the urinals. They locked me in as soon as […]
Read moreOpportunities for Artists and Writers: November 2023
Pepper Coast Lit is currently accepting poetry and prose submissions from Africans, people of color, those in the diaspora, descendants, and affiliates of the aforementioned. Send double/single-spaced work in 12-point Times New Roman and/or Palatino Linotype font as either .doc/.docx to peppercoastlitsubmissions@gmail.com. Do not include your name and email address anywhere in the document except in […]
Read moreIn Review: Exit Signs on a Seaside Highway by Lara Atallah
In Lara Atallah’s Exit Signs on a Seaside Hghway, poems bloom like stubborn flowers from a rubble of violence and heartbreak that is very much alive, presenting devastating paradoxes of love that knows its own futility and prevails anyway, and a hope that walks through fire, resisting annihilation, while never turning its back on the […]
Read moreBrumation by Macallan Lay
All mental collapse happensin the winter. The brief pop of red tree leaves before dropping. That’s it. I was enclosedin my bed when I marked the distancebetween me and spring. Flashlight under the covers with a mapof my head in my hands. I fell asleep for a long time. A brain is like a spider’s web,shaped for protectionbut by […]
Read moreMy Gender as a List of Things I Don’t Understand by Shaelin Bishop
metaphysics celebrity worship when to arrive at a party fashion trends the point of gambling dark matter how to look a stranger in the eye who decides when a war is over and who decides it’s begun in the first place how to take an outfit from day to night and what is the point […]
Read moreTribute to a Friend by Chris Klassen
I’m in a race with my lungs. Well, not so much with them as against them. They haven’t been very accommodating lately. And for full transparency, they’re not really my lungs, I’m just using them to the best of my abilities. They belonged to someone else once, someone who, I heard unofficially, didn’t survive a […]
Read morebalcony / break by Michael Russell
Michael Russell (he/they) is coauthor of chapbook Split Jawed with Elena Bentley (forthcoming from Collusion Books) and mother monster to chapbook Grindr Opera (Frog Hollow Press). They are queer, mad, and overflowing with anxiety. Currently, he has a craving for chocolate chip pancakes with bananas and thinks you’re fantabulous. Insta: @michael.russell.poet Michael’s previous piece: sadcore […]
Read moreMystic Will by Audrey T. Carroll
Even after Phoebe returned from the funeral, she couldn’t bring herself to make any more half-hearted attempts at getting something on the canvas. The shades were never bright enough, the lines looked stiff and lifeless. Phoebe had tried different tools, different mediums, different canvas sizes. Nothing worked anymore. She decided to distract herself before bed, […]
Read moreantonyms for fucking w/ all the lights off by Liam Strong
leeks,bulbs lit of pencils,of expulsion,space between shared space ;commonality,cataract a similar sounding moan,cascade from precipice|picked up a hair tie on a hiking trail the other day,burst thereafter,then morning;trillium & sumac–we ’re less animal than we expect,tapetum lucidum,mammalia of the mirror| amatoxin in amanita verna;aversion of blood type O to all else:lover stay back,i don’t know […]
Read moreDavid Bowie doesn’t carry my ex-boyfriends in his arms down the street anymore by Liam Strong
Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cottagecore straight edge punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook everyone’s left the hometown show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Impossible Archetype and Emerald City, among several others. They […]
Read moreSONG AGAINST MYSELF by Zachary Bond
In the greasy morning mirrors I barely even acknowledge myself And I can’t remember how to sing Songs I used to know by heart Surely what’s wrong with me is not The same as what’s wrong with you Surely I comprise a special case When I pace the apartment I know I’m practicing for future […]
Read moreDISTRACTION MEANS “TO BE DRAGGED APART” by Zachary Bond
For some people I suppose distraction is a respiteFrom life’s hundred million enigmas they daily fight- Or-flight or, finally, try to crackThe codes to. And, sure, I feel that. But for me it’s the reason I first felt self-hate so hardI saw a window not as a thousand painful shards But as a way out—I […]
Read moreIn Review: Numamushi by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh
“Words are water” is a phrase that comes up repeatedly in Mina Ikemoto Ghosh’s novella Numamushi. Both words and water have the capability of being both beneficial and deadly to humans, and they both come in various forms that can be observed, deconstructed, and rebuilt. How words are used and examined can change depending on […]
Read moreThe Longest Summer by Alex Carrigan
After Alexandrine Ogundimu I had to scrap my memoirbecause too much of ithad to be redacted. I could talk about thestupid Doc Martens I woreto my retail job every daywithout a cease and desist, but to talk about what myfather said to my motherwould put me against a wall. My father would tie a silk […]
Read moreWild = Wind by Alex Carrigan
About what’s past, Hold on when you can, I used to say,And when you can’t, let go,let the wind blow through your heart. Like a leaf clings to the tree,I lived, in those days, at the forest’s edge–You must keep what you’ve promisedvery close to your heart, that way you’ll never forgetis what I’ve always […]
Read moreI Was Put Away Because It Was Not My Season by Valerie Loveland
Valerie Loveland’s book [unsolved mysteries theme song], poems about the TV series Unsolved Mysteries, is coming out in 2023 Valerie’s previous piece: Jose Chung’s From Outer Space (Issue 65)
Read moreCollage of Previous Featured Artists
Featured Artists (from top left to bottom right) Maggie Chiang (Issue 8) Lorenza Centi (Issue 13) Isa Beniston (Issue 16) Andrew Holmquist (Issue 21) Monica Andino (Issue 25) Ramona Russu (Issue 36) Alexandra Dumitrică (Issue 39) Alyssa Moore (Issue 29) Danielle Morgan (Issue 42) Georgie Wileman (Issue 48) Pride Nyasha (Issue 33) Neha Hirve (Issue […]
Read moreReturning Home to the Place I’d Never Been by Natalie Korman
I can’t find my footing on this sliver of a sidewalk. I curse whoever slappedthese streets onto this hillside, tipping the contents of the steepdriveways into the streets,tipping the streets down the slopes into the valley.The main plaza is cleared and flat so the grand buildings can stand,but the streets start climbing immediately all around […]
Read moreLines by Katie Cameron
The new mask doesn’t squeeze, scrunch my ears.End of day, indentations where it pressed against my facein the staff bathroom mirrorlike marks around my eyes after swimming, unclamping my goggles, lines—here, my skin said yes, here no. I am jealous of the way my body asserts legibly. Wish it could etch how I feel about returning to the pool, starting […]
Read moreI love this TikTok Era by Claire Rychlewski
awe-struck at our smoothbrained lexiconspeaking in diluted idioms (esperanto is giving failure)which is beautiful in this Dark Age apocalyptic way, we’ll soon begiving monk, we’ll be monkbossing intothe sun, and she is just like me for realour very own Hands Across the World are people still playing songs backwardslistening for secret messages? i feel hot and gauzylike i’ve been set […]
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