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.
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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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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BITS ON SOUR BOYS | Naomi Langer
i. Sonic We eat in his car, parked, light off, radio on, watching the sun set over the edge of suburbia. Romantic-like. If we wanted, the identical tops of a hundred gable roofs in the distance could almost look like mountains, the heat waves off of the hot summer pavement the surface of a cool […]
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COUNTING CROWS | Olivia Ladun
I like to call this counting crows. A boy told me he liked me while I was high and crying listening to some indie bullshit. My ex girlfriend smoked everyday, 3:11 pm, after school in her backyard, and I guess that is sort of cringeworthy. Tell me you like me. I like to call this […]
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THIS IS THE CLOSEST I’LL GET TO PAINTING YOU | Ayah Elbeyali
the beat of your heart– one. two. three. four. the gleam of your sweat– heat. shimmer. hips. quiver. the almond of your eyes– green. kind. honey. mine. the space behind your ribs– ache. flood. furnace. blood. the palm of your hand– red. flower. touch. devour. the bend of your thumb– square. raw. hook. trace. the soft […]
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GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS AND GIRLS | Jemma Hoolahan
girl liking boys and girls girl hating labels; hating boxes, but girl loving; always loving. girl falling for crooked smiles; the quiver of eye lashes like leaves in the wind, protecting cobalt irises full of love; full of empathy.
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I AM EXACTLY LIKE A WIND STORM | Maia Irwin
I. The night is alive and so am I. II. Maybe instead of the wildfire I long to be I should be a rolling storm. III. Or maybe just the shadows. Maybe the night is harsher than the day.
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GABY, HAVE YOU DONE YOUR BEST? | Kaitlyn Crow
My first roommate in the adolescent unit had most growing on her arms and spots of mold between her toes. I didn’t realize until months later that there is nothing beautiful about that.
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UNTITLED #1| Kaitlyn Crow
i. I am the mood swings striking in the middle of the night, keeping you nocturnal past three in the morning. They call me mania, bipolar. I am your misdiagnosis, the ADHD pills that made you go insane, the tug of impulse when manic becomes the new normal.
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Digital Photography | Ysidro Xylander
FROM KIERKEGAARD TO REGINE | Alex Lenkei
“Darling, dearest, dead,” Sovereign queen of my heart: You’re the sunset in a cup, you’re the ink bleeding into my marginalia of Aristotle, Kant, and Luther, and in the candlelight alone your face shines ever new across the gradient of my half-worn pages.
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GAPS | Alex Lenkei
To be a construction of signs of sighs, remembering memories of encounters that were dreams— meeting-places in the dark.
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LITTER ON THE STREETS OF LAS VEGAS | Nicole Lourette
The bare-breasted nun prays in front of children as their parents snap photos of anything but her body. She is not the memory they want of this place. Her habit hangs far below her puckered lips, and for $45, she’ll show you what spring is like on Jupiter.
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ST. ANTHONY’S RELIQUARY | Nicole Lourette
There are yellow roses at Mary’s feet and two fingers missing from her right hand. She looks fragile, but the other at the pulpit looks more like a harlot. Jimi Hendrix would enjoy
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THE CRITERIA BY WHICH MY MOTHER SELECTS A FATHER FOR HER CHILD | Nicole Lourette
He has to be a white man, under six feet mid-forties intelligent a George Clooney chin
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ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE (EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY) |Michael Prihoda
it’s natural to be afraid, watching the birth and death of the day. this is your catastrophe and the cure,
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DARKEST HOURS (FOX AND THE BIRD) | Michael Prihoda
when i was young and heading east these ashes weren’t counterfeit. we avoided
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VAGABOND CITY 