A blush of night-bloom. That exquisite last word. In the type of family that could afford To fall apart, a young girl grows More hands than things to cling to. She’s Just thumbnail innocence, motel white Wallpaper thighs and perforated silence In glitter flecked too-open hands.
Read moreSOFT by VICTORIA BUTLER
A boy is burning in my bed and as I watch his face disappear I curse the world for teaching me how to be everything but water.
Read moreCOGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY (CBT) by SAMANTHA CHEH
I sometimes wonder how, when I am not paying attention, from behind me, like a cinematic ghost, you creep back into the creases of my skin, where the sister-parts of my arms meet, the length of them seeming to break in two. Stiff like joss sticks burning down to ash, propped up in bricks laid […]
Read moreTHE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH AND OTHER NICETIES” by ALISON GRAHAM
I was the fishes’ lungs, the earrings 1 on your daughter and polyphonic you were checking the time. – a hell of a way to go, uprooting leg hair 3 and the picnic plate tongued by flies. When the news called me exceptional they spoke into a microphone of me: the […]
Read more19149 by LAURA BRZYSKI
Mom read x-rays for a living, but made a life kissing the bones of a 1932 row home always under construction Dad repairing with arthritic hands from the ground up
Read moreEDITORS on WATER
Prompt: 100 words on water. Give it a shot and tag us on Tumblr, Instagram, or Twitter & we’ll show you some love! Bright summer nails look like bits of coral floating through the water, I think, as my hand grazes the lake. I wipe five coral fingers on my melon shirt. Solo wears orange […]
Read moreDISAPPEARING IN BEACON HILL by cj west
You are a hitchhiker’s brainwash, a negative gasmask, a pair of waiting hands vacant everywhere You are a hoarder of ridges, a concave risk, heartsick and craving bludgeon exchange in a room of soundless piano keys, pushed in. Lonely carnivore, with a dirty forehead a mouth of murder. You beautiful handsaw, ripping my roots to […]
Read moreBODY SAY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE by cj west
being touched in a charged body by accident bounces bones enough to shed dead skinand leave flesh behind to finagle steady breath without a frame of mind barely attached to a torso danglingout of the car window even if hanging on means swallowing the one-winged mosquitos or pounding a steak until the vesselsrun dry and deformed or become […]
Read moreSPLATTER by cj west
—– cj west is a 20 yr old junior at Emerson College, where they created a major in Performance Poetry. They don’t care what your parents think of her tattoos. Their favorite things are: cats, bread, and women. Two they’re allergic to, one is out to get them. If they can’t change the world they […]
Read moreMISDIAL TONE by cj west
hi you might like the way the moon looks will you go outside and see for yourself put the phone down first open the door then close it take however long you need to make up your mind if you don’t come back before time runs out i won’t blame you doesn’t it look like […]
Read moreVagabond City Interviews Emma Ensley
In a word, Emma Ensley’s work is magical. It sparkles and lives and mixes mediums in a way that complicates each piece. As soon as we saw it, we were moved to send a rambling email about how stunning stunning stunning it was, and would she be interested in being featured? A total sweetheart, Emma […]
Read moreCOVET by LAUREN MILICI
you kept my amethyst in your jacket / so I put a new piece of citrine in your palm / we sit at the bar & talk about cemeteries / tell me about your father again / talk about New York / that one time you were onstage dripping with blood & your best friend […]
Read moreQUEER (IN RETROSPECT) by AUDREY T. CARROL
15 and she invited me to sleep over at her place minimal adult supervision hours one and two dedicated to mocking a children’s movie because we were not children she let me test drive her violin, first string instrument I ever touched, told me my instinct by way of heritage
Read moreREPLACING THE MONUMENT #19 by DARREN DEMAREE
We used to be able to collect the dust, to make whole families out of the dust & though those families were never able to fit a ship inside of the bottle, they could could give themselves wholly to the land that made them. The hard times took
Read moreFOR ITS BITS by MADDY KEITH
6 “I like it for its bits,” she prefaced. She sent me Little Expressionless Animals by David Foster Wallace. It was as if she were trying to kill me. She’d gone through the trouble of creating a PDF I could print because she knew how I felt about holding words in my hands in order […]
Read moreVagabond City Interviews Witch Craft Mag
Witch Craft is a print magazine. They publish twice a year on the equinoxes and publish other tidbits on their blog regularly. They also run Sad Spell Press, where they publish a chapbook series known as Spellbooks and other magic as they find it. VAGABOND CITY: You say that your idea of Witch Craft is […]
Read more18 EL VIOLONCELLO by SARAH FRANCES MORAN
I touched raw fingers to the strings. Felt how gasping for air after being hooked, feels. I’m so long out of water. Somewhere in the background Momma is warning, Do not touch… pero, it’s so shiny, so shiny.
Read moreVagabond City Interviews Featured Artist Jaexhin
We were scrolling through Instagram one afternoon and being distracted from everything we’re supposed to do as ~millennials~ in the workforce—and then we came across Jaexhin. The first thing that grabbed us about Jaexhin’s work was the color. It was bold, color blocked at times, and the lines were sharp, with shadows creating major play […]
Read moreSIX WORDS AT THE OLD LOCK AND DAM NO. 27 by ELIZABETH A. DAVIDSON
(I sit on the edge of a bench facing an overgrown field that has been infiltrated by daylilies. Orange heads bobbing above tall weeds and lush grass. Cleverly disguised snipers waiting in trenches. They call them the Ditch Lilly. An old man sits on the bench next to me. Nods his head. Crosses his legs. […]
Read moreNO MANUAL FOR THE QUEER GIRL by DORA LEVY
my dear [ ], a.c. said that fragments are good things to inhabit, so i love you?/ i don’t know what this feeling is, because the last time i had a crush, i wrote songs for someone else in a way of disguising who it was for. (my first published work is really for you.) […]
Read moreTHE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH by ALLIE LONG
When you run your hands across my hips, I suddenly forget it is not a sin to have a body. Each point of contact turns my white skin dingy – something like a tea stain.
Read moreGATHER AROUND OBSESSION by JESSIE JANESHEK
the wooden bridge stretching over black cacti. Remember calves breaking as fast as you can. What do you tell your body paraded? That you’re not satisfied until you’re sick in the dark
Read moreGAS STATION ENTOMOLOGY FOR A DRAGON FLY by EVANA KAELYN BODIKER
Off Interstate-77, she lies on the pavement: belly up, bulging eyes to the exhaust-filled, periwinkle evening sky. This is her deathbed, a ground covered in a ROYGBIV of gum, pressed permanently into the sidewalk by the footfalls of kids on their way back to their magic carpets that take them safely to Disney World. These […]
Read morePICK ME UP by KAYLI SCHOLZ
These knees, will be the pick-me-up when you fall on them. Knees, that you fell upon, crabby and rude in your A,B,C baby swing. You marveled at your mother in her cocktail gown, the shape of her shoes out of your reach. You lay there like a splinter until she picked you up. On your knees, struggling to see. Hide-and-seek […]
Read moreQUESTION FOR A HUMAN by TERRY ABRAHAMS
how is it to carry a weight greater even than the ocean and still float
Read moreAURELIANO by KAYLA EASON
The snow melt tastes of last November’s silent lightening, the blue air of Sierras. This part of California sees a constellation’s thrusted
Read moreBURNING ANIMALS by ELIZABETH BREDER
Tied up in bedsheets, drooling kerosene— This slump is a slow burning fire. Death by boredom or starvation, or By the constriction of your own hands Around the sprig of your throat. Will you stumble, sleepwalking From the burning room or paint a portrait In ash on the mattress? I get up to put a […]
Read moreCRY WOLF by M. MILLER
judge, let it be known, it is so rare a girl cries wolf. the trial is so familiar, so familiar, so familiar (i am so tired) i could script it. ‘promising future’ and ‘boy of strong character’ and ‘first-time offence’. they report his swim times whilst she drowns
Read moreI WILL NOT BE RETURNING TO CHESTERFIELD MALL by ALLISON DARCY
No, I cannot go back there. It is June, and so, there will be no Christmas lights, or bows on the carousel. And it is late, so, it will be too crowded for me to hear the piano that reverberates on the white tile. That is what I think of: mornings before camp, when I […]
Read moreAFTER THE DOWNPOUR by ELIZABETH A. DAVIDSON
You knew it would be someone, it always is. Before you try and count the times the Ohio River has seeped into your neighbors houses. Before you hear the push brooms hit pavement with a resounding crack. You, standing inside your dry house, just out of floods reach, staring at origami swans hanging in the […]
Read moreNeyat Yohannes on “I’m Very Into You” by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark
Recently, Carrie Brownstein—actor, comedian, author, and one-third of Riot grrrl band, Sleater-Kinney—posted a snap to Instagram showcasing her copy of I’m very into you laying atop a red background sans any commentary. It’s no wonder that Brownstein didn’t include any words with her picture because this intimate book has a way of rendering the reader […]
Read moreVagabond City Interviews Do Nguyen Mai
DO NGUYEN MAI, name written family name to first, is a first-generation Vietnamese-American poet and musician residing in the Los Angeles Area in the United States. In her free time, Mai can often be found researching Southeast Asian history and teaching Vietnamese to young children. Mai is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Rambutan Literary, […]
Read moreBethany Mary on “The Female Gaze Is Cool” by Alexandra Wuest
Alexandra Wuest’s chapbook “The Female Gaze is Cool” advocates for the elimination of tunnel vision, for a new perspective that shouldn’t be so new. The female gaze is so often an internalized male gaze, a reflection of how other men (and women) see women. But the female gaze should be its own gaze, and these […]
Read moreEDITORS on EGGS
This is an apology. I’ve been throwing my hair over my shoulders for too long. Sometimes, I remember how to be still. I’ve tried, but I don’t know how to talk about her. Last summer, my nails were short and I spoke to people about who she was. The backyard of my parent’s home and […]
Read moreHOOFBEATS by FISAYO ADEYEYE
It’s the talons stabbed and spread through the nervous system that keep the mouse twitching and give it the performance of life. A boy reads the forest floor: A bouquet. A pitying. He reads the horizon: an unkindness.
Read moreBANANAS by CORY ASHLEY
GOOD HAIR by JASMINE COMBS
Parts of me are burning in dad’s ashtray. Tuffs of coiled hair engulfed in flame. Clink of hot-comb against stove. Crackle of fire against pomade. The house is smoky with the burning of my hair the flattening into submission the taming of the wild black the Saturday ritual.
Read moreENBY by CORY ASHLEY
SEE ME by CORY ASHLEY
ATHEIST by MICHAEL COUNTER
he was my religion where no god could exist laid slain in his spirit each time his hands pray upon me words baptized in tongues tithed offered in remembrance of we
Read moreMY MOTHER by KATHLEEN RADIGAN
Met my father in summer at some wedding. She won’t say if they kissed or felt clairvoyant twinges during Vows.
Read moreHOW IT FEELS TO BE A GAY BOY by ERIC CLINE
insert a metaphor about paper cranes, their wings open wide as their creases can go before ripping and pulp beaks breach the earth.
Read moreLETTER TO MARYAM by MILLIE GUILLE
I was staring at a map when the men came, measuring the width of Calcutta with a thumb as they told me to stand and led me away. The blindfold smelt of cardamom and I remembered my mother’s shoe-size and the warmth of her body […]
Read moreBORROWERS by KATHLEEN RADIGAN
Since my mother lives inside me, I bake a lemon cake and frost it with a blunt knife. In weeks of frizz and fat rattles I knew her as my Other. We’re two people, she said. Start hardening. In autumn she taught me to use a shower. Hot bullets over her breasts. Our bathing suits […]
Read moreDISSOCIATION AS TIME TRAVEL by FISAYO ADEYEYE
Rolling coins & cat eye marbles An excess of gold Do not be afraid: of how the body lingers after light, how your teeth ache in the cold The soft burn of your muscles pulling away from one another The deck loses suspension & our knuckles their suspense The tissue paper. Your pupil’s blood- orange […]
Read moreFROM THE TREE by MJ SANTIAGO
When will I be rich enough to visit Mexico again? Maybe I should have stayed poor so I wouldn’t have to hear about your trip to India between your second and third years of college and how good the mangoes were I would rather claw my own ear drums out than hear you say I […]
Read moreHOMEWARD by MJ SANTIAGO
The cat disappeared for two weeks and came back with one less ear: I was the cat. When someone bumps into me on the subway I want to yell, I came from the swamp, and emerged cleanly, ready with an extra row of teeth.
Read moreBIRTHRIGHTS by KYRA WOLFF
In Minnesota during the silver season she married a frozen swimming pool masquerading as a Great Lake.
Read morePRETAS by HALEY CLAPP
Years and years and you– my shrivel-handed, my ever-praying buddha monk, seek samma ditthi, tasked with pulling splinters from a mother’s memories.
Read moreFEATURED ARTIST: JO YEH
When we saw Jo Yeh‘s work in Paper Darts, we knew we had to have her. Her artwork is stunning, the imagery fresh and a spin away from collage as the unexpected is linked and bound to produce bright, undeniable beauty. The women in her work are living their lives and happen to be captured […]
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