Issue 89 – VAGABOND CITY

The 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 […]

Art, Everything, Issue 89

Flamingo 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 […]

Everything, Issue 89, Poetry

In 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 […]

Everything, Issue 89, Poetry

Return 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.

Fiction, Issue 89, Prose

What Shouldn’t I Be? by angel ogoemesim

Content warning: violence, self-harm Honey said holding onto memory is like trying to grasp water with spread fingers. She told me to hold on to the sweet ones, to turn my mind into cupped palms before they leak from the gaps of my fingers. If you remember anything, remember this: hold on, hold on, she’d […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 89, Prose

My 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 […]

Everything, Issue 89, Opportunities for Artists & Writers

Opportunities 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 […]

Everything, Issue 89, review

In 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 […]

Everything, Issue 89, Poetry

Brumation 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 […]