I don’t want to talk about last night. his smooth hands thick and ugly how I loved them I said I went by your old room and I looked into the window like I always used to. I remember every night we spent there all the clever ways that I convinced […]
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—after Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto: “A House so Cramped God Could Barely Squeeze In” the sound of clattering metals talks the room into a war ground you hurry into the living room the smoke of yelling clouds the air like dust from horse’s hooves father after […]
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New Jersey is a convenience store I hunted for an ATM on an October night. I had avowed to never use heroin again but now I was half-drunk or half-sober The bartender immediately made me for what I was miserable and unconvinced that anyone had an answer or anything to offer to supplement the human […]
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your mouth wants to forget the breadth of this place, forget how you rolled into it & swallowed its lynching rains. for what place turns the things in it into ashes. what place burns into the skin & says you’re an embodiment & a reflection of things cracked & squashed. a boy once saw you […]
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I blame every Santa Cruz summer for every ounce of invincibility I’ve felt, if you can come out of the thaw still deer spry, if you can swallow the sun like those born here, you can do anything underwater & how many times should I have died but at 16 I didn’t believe in death […]
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in cristian’s house there was always clamor the type of place where no deafness of money existed or silence of seclusion like the ocean’s depths and oftentimes we’d sneak up to the top floor where we would fill our pockets with pilfered quarters from his mom’s wardrobe drawer we’d walk along a drainage ditch down […]
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I will come hard On the couch Tell me you like it deep That is it for me This salt ache I can hold you in my mouth For the rest of my life if I want to Feel the pressure release quiet Night refrigerator hums cars pass by I have packed the pots and pans […]
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When I was still a girl, the boys asked when I’d stop believing in magic. They might ask you one day, too and you’ll have your own words, your own beliefs, your own magic. So all I ask is that you not forget the fish that leapt clear out of the water, the bubble you […]
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i. will god let me be a conduit going anywhere i can have you, into elysian fields where i do begin an eager pilgrimage to where your thighs have already started kissing, where i do place my ear to your stomach as a shell to the sea and know the deepest part of you to […]
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Somewhere on the blue felted seat of the S7 line I had lost it. The little orange duck. It was a wind-up toy my father had bought me on a business trip just a few weeks ago. It fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, and when I turned the key nestled behind the […]
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Hannah Cohen’s poetry collection Bad Anatomy shows us how our world looks when we hold it in vine-wrapped hands, at once a fragile ball and a strong snare. Read this book to be inspired to look at the world through new eyes, with a fresh stop-to-smell-the-roses vision. Cohen’s very first poem is about everything she […]
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When a home loses its ability to comfort, a person can be left not just searching for a place of safety but also asking what safety really means. Stephen Furlong’s debut chapbook, What Loss Taught Me, approaches such seemingly intractable topics with courage and grace. Taking on experiences of abuse and loss, Furlong shifts adeptly between […]
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Water When my mother tried to take me to swimming classes all I did was hold back tears and let them go under the water where it was warm and blurry. The tears burned, or maybe that was chlorine. I hated feeling the cold on my knees when I was tucked up against the wall, […]
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For many artists, the question of how to create in the era of climate change is difficult to answer. Caroline Dare has some ideas. Caroline is a 25-year-old American photographer currently living in New Zealand. Her body of work ranges from monochrome portraits to colorful, almost surrealistic scenes, from carefully composed pieces to fleeting moments […]
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Where you are from? What are your passions and hobbies? My full name is Alexandra Cristina Dumitrică. I was born in Bucharest, Romania, during a rainy November night almost 21 years ago. Today, I still live in Bucharest, where I study Pharmacy at University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila.” Even though the career path I […]
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If I could smoke fear away I’d roll that motherfucker up. -Kendrick Lamar More than a year and a half after my last sip of alcohol, I still get nightmares about drinking again. And they are nightmares, despite the scene being only in my little kitchen, me standing at the sink, swirling my icy glass […]
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I am a Sarah Lawrence girl who loves Sarah Lawrence girls. Many of us do– we love to love each other. Staring over sociology books, all of us in love with whoever we find looking back. We keep secrets under a cherry blossom tree that’s no longer there. We huddle under the sculpture rumored to […]
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a leaf caught between two fingers snatch back the words, unchosen, opting instead for some that won’t place my heart between your palms. I dandelion-wish the next phrase can transplant the muscle from where it’s lived so long on my bloodied sleeve, press it back into my chest where it belongs even though I know […]
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my discount full-size mattress has traditionally been known to comfortably accommodate a maximum party of 2—maybe— on a cool night when the hot air trapped between my legs and the old duvet isn’t so severe as to de-wrinkle the sheets but this night, we bunked our bodies, stacked like buttered toast on a diner plate […]
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Across our bowl deep as our atmosphere, you provide friction for those attempting re-entry. Clouds are garments you put on and discard. You layer them up and peel them off. When you fling them they scoop us up and hurl down on us. I saw your bare chest once on a late summer evening in […]
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it is a bright orange sunday and my fists are unripening and i am still contemplating that baby albino turtle born with a wide open heart – so tender and exposed, a small pulsing blackberry abandoned by his own shell. i try to cup his breaths like running water with my two inconsolable hands; each […]
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i think often of what i am worth in bounties— what would you trade for my teeth back, cleaned? what would you borrow to bring me home? what would even be home enough for me and another person to both know it? i am laughed out of my own voice when i am worried i […]
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Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancin’ with Gina’s pink-budded tongueuntil she lets out a moan almost loud enough for someone to hear.I’ve been a connoisseur of un-out women; now that I think about itthe ones with daddy issues, unstable self-images, and bluntsdipped in promethazine. We smoke gas in the back of Julian’s pickupand you […]
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tuesday nights: fold tiny paper birds smudged white ignore phone numbers i’ll never text tie off lovers like old stories with a string i’ll crown myself jeweled with flowers hide my face cross out the name of you like a to-do list make vows for tomorrow, to growl alone. Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, […]
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Tell us about yourself. Where you are from? Hi! I’m Karen Thom. I’m Canadian and currently live on the gorgeous southern west coast of British Columbia, Canada. I’m reminded daily by my picturesque surroundings (and the news) how truly fortunate I am. What are your passions and hobbies? My first passion is my family and […]
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Purple and sun-worn, supple and tired, you hold me on the couch in my parents’ living room. Where I cry into the space between your breasts and mine. Half-asleep, I pat your chest to shape a pillow. You belly laugh yellow into the overcast. We drive across the midwest, eat steaks marked by signs that […]
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where she sits on the front steps of the nyc townhouse i will own someday and spouts nonsense, says do your science homework, sweetie. says what matters more, what you say to yourself when you lose or what you say to yourself when you win? repeats c’est la vie. c’estlaviec’estlaviec’estlavie until my ears bleed so […]
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You told me you had your first kiss at Papa Chinos by the bushes I was awestruck that a Papa Chinos exists where they have bushes I wonder what kind of a neighbourhood you grew up in Was it a brownstone one, with houses lined one after the other or was it a scene […]
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my mother stands in my driveway holding two grocery bags like twin babies. i crush my cigarette under my foot and say mom, let me carry those for you. i tell her i’ll stop smoking when i’m pregnant and she says i already am my own baby. what i want more is to be my own […]
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i watch as my grandmother, with bordeaux painted arms, listens as my grandfather tells her about the routine details of their shared household: a squirrel that keeps trying to get into the birdfeeder, a new can of pam cooking spray has been added to the pantry, a leak in the roof their son came over […]
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My body is my home, but I shuttered it awhile back, and I’ve hovered nearby like a tangled kite, a drunken bird. Now I look through the windows, knock on panes, trace ledges. My hands follow mossy walls. I see how the roof points to the sky, and I want to live in there again, […]
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Coming back always makes me aware of my space: the pale islands making up an archipelago on my legs, the dark trees encompassing many forests on my arms, the open caverns dusting my face; and dividing me from the continent I call Home— a land mass formed from centuries of tradition but nursing weeds of […]
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Of all my inheritances my father’s appetite pulls heaviest the translucent ache licks my joints sweet a mouth without a mouth begging not for fullness but to be rid of absence a man who praises water’s return to shore transforms my […]
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Where are you from? What kind of work do you do? I am from Saint-Petersburg Russia, but live in Israel now. I work as an illustrator and graphic designer. When did you begin illustrating? Could you tell us what your process is? I began illustrating about 6 years ago, after finding a modern illustration catalog […]
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She lies back on the bed while he watches the snow outside settling softly like the skin in the curve of her back. With the curtains and his attention drawn back inside, the soft machine of his body reminds her of the streets after the plow comes through. She sighs and thinks a mouth is […]
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After Brad Paisley, “Ticks” Every atmosphere you bottle to your lips was the other half of an idea. Let’s get out of drive, find a moonlight, kiss a path I used to […]
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molten time // or perhaps memories, wet with windings and wanderings, wondering and the wariness and weariness the waxed (and waned) songs the many psalms sung and hung from expectant arms beings of ground pulled from homes soused with the whispers of living ghosts i came to give offerings at the place where trees come […]
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i’m from the overlap on the clock where wild dogs and roosters crossfire. the ambiguity of stars or satellites is where i wash my hair. ankles crossed, i forget that it is rude to forget about the margin between my knees. i wore jeans to avoid the reminder from men. still, he considered a handful […]
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I would bang the egg of my forehead against bathroom walls Sunday mornings. ✝ My parents would drop me at Amy’s then over coffee cake and orange juice they’d whisper “We sure do love her, but—” I had a dream last night Amy. We were holding hands walking by the side of Route 55 […]
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here are the mountains— even though Ma said that the highest mountain we have in this wretched place is a hill— that I awed at from Pa’s shoulders, resting on hollow bones and shaky foundations. […]
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In this treatment, I am Cameron Frye and my old man, that’s me too, I am the interminable clang against my skull, making a charmed life a nightmare, making an exquisite home a hellhole. I am trying to evade consequences of freedom. It is so dirty and so frightening, I recoil. Freedom dings and puts […]
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For a time, I forgot the skin of white pines, chapped from Maine winters, their sap seeping through the bark. I forgot, by loving the dogs of Guanaja that barked from the docks of stilt homes as I passed, parting the water in a dinghy. By loving snow crowding a spit in Alaska, the stones […]
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Where are you from? What kind of work do you do and what materials do you work with for each piece? I was born in Romania and I am currently living in Corsica while travelling around the world. My work is mainly illustrations, drawings, paintings that feature The Girl with Black Hair – a name that […]
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Sometimes I wish there was some kind of unit with which to measure change. At one point, I tried to measure change in habits – in the things that carved my days into shape, in the catchphrases I used, and so on. This method worked for about a week until I realised that it didn’t […]
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I count the days that pass into dusk, each one making me a victor of small favors and ticked-off things. This sleepless city won’t hold a stranger. Have I just entered the fresh middle time of my life or simply boarded a one-way off-peak midnight express? At times, I see my face stuck on every […]
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(title inspired by “Blue Light” by Mitski) i was never born to be a dull / kitchen knife / i was born to be a sharp knife / that slices thru / whatever i damn well please / to slice hearts open / & call myself a heart breaker Vanessa Maki is a queer […]
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“They told us we could chase any dream And then we died in our sleep” – Sadistik Somewhere in a dark room I tuck my face into the seams of my torn shoes; The world is a body of two hundred miens: Each one is a metaphor for foisted entropy- Spectrums of mirages in the […]
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we drove to the hardware store before we went bowling. You had to buy screws. You wanted to install a shelf. I make due without shelving, cluttering rocks with spice jars, souvenirs, old cards. maybe a shelf is a good idea, maybe it’s salvation. Instead, I go to the bakery and eat a Long John […]
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it starts in America, this year a shift has occurred I see some Black Americans embracing African cultures, Yoruba culture in particular some use it for aesthetics, spell “Orisa” as “Orisha” for the first time ever I don’t say I’m a Black American. I walk up to a priestess and tell her I’m actually Yoruba. […]
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i eat chocolate chips for dinner the first night i notice my clock’s stopped working and it could be a coincidence but i don’t think it is. the first night the clock stops working is the first one that i don’t have the energy to brush my teeth or set an alarm. i write a […]
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VAGABOND CITY 