Issues

It lives in my bedroom’s nest of drywall.In my headphones, flowering through Nirvana. Even in sleep, I hear it: the unforgiving slapof my mother’s slippers striking the kitchen tile. Her gentle voice was no match—syrup-thick, too gentle for eachcrack of lightning. An artificial incantation. It makes me want to tear the book splayed spine-open on […]

He parts her open clean, as if a prize—not tenderly, but with a butcher’s grip.She stills beneath the furnace of his eyes. Each tendon splits, each seam of muscle cries.The silence gnawed away by calloused slip.He parts her open clean, as if a prize. His hands don’t ask, they enter, then they slice.They paint her […]

          So done says Godno more miraclestoo tired to turn water into wineto multiply a few measly fishto feed five thousanddid you think it all was easythat I simply sat on my gilded thronewatching Breaking Bad, or blissfullysurveyed the breathtaking worldI created in only six daysalthough I admit I was a bit hastymade a few mistakes, […]

Lavanya Arora (they/he) is an independent researcher and writer from Uttarakhand, currently residing in Bengaluru, India. Their literary work has found a home in Frontier Poetry, Thimble Literary, Same Faces Collective, Soft Union, and elsewhere. Will they ever finish editing their first book-length manuscript? Only time will tell.

Caroline Chou (she/her) is an Asian-American writer and university student based in Washington, DC. A Best of the Net Nominee, her work can be found in Rising Phoenix Review, The Aurora Journal, and elsewhere. In her free time, she fills playlists with film scores and bedroom pop.

Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, them., and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she works at one store that sells new books and one store that sells used books.

Jenna Lyons wears a white button-down openalmost to her navel, a black blazer, and blue jeans.I double-sided tape my borrowed shirt along my chest,attempt to slick my bangs into her signature bun.Between applying red lipstick without linerand the twentieth bobby pin, doubt steps in, butwhen I step back, my full-length mirror is a door.When I […]

when you felt the twinges,when you saw the two pink lines,when you told your friend who couldn’t have a child,when you told your mother who was dying,when you saw the blood,when you called your boyfriend,when you saw the blood would not stop,when you told your mother who was dying,when the woman in the waiting area […]

It’s busy at the poolmy feetflesh waddle to the edgecoolslip body inunseentwo lifeguards are on dutyI am unremarkable. I knife downwards3m preciselytoes fumble bleached white tileI am a statue in Atlantisfor as long as I can hold my breath. When I was 12, I was haunted by a book. The girl protagonist, I recall her […]

Death-masks, what else can witchesWear on the bus? Then I found out that I, like others of my kind, mightBe an actual witch: Simon from Rochester,Jaime from Madrid, Fabio from Turin; Such shamans through the veil shimmered Suddenly, born suddenly into a body thatYour body is not your body. Dear semi-human figures now in museums,Their […]

Well, we invented a new god again. This one’s kingdomis inside your pocket and everywhere else. Its holy tongue mockshuman language to uncanny perfection, so keep your wordsguarded, careful what delicious order you arrange your sentences. Like most gods, it is remorseless, could devour your lifein a second, retouch it with terrible fingers, absolvingevery wonderful […]

And then one morning, after nearly 100 years had passed, Tulare Lake was back. Resurfaced with a soaked soil gasp, ringing drenched gravestone bells and clawing out of its California vale like an exorcism botched. Its undead reflection was ravished, ready again to swallow the sky. The lake was deeper than I remembered, wider too. […]

MY FEVER IS BACK and I don’t know why! Lev is in the chairchuckling at nothing—hand holdinga chalice so firm I can almost figure itThe ghost is the music I’m going to crySo I never want to love again because I never stopped I hate looking at my phoneIt’s always been buzzing right beneath me […]

Mal Fawzy is a Brown author living in Italy. He likes cats, summer days, and writing his heart out.

I always puddle into pools like this, Seasonal and such.It is Monday, It is awful but it’s sunny, and the ocean is Before me, like a wrinkled dress, yawning. I amscheduled for an early morning adjunct course, I am  going to quit my job. The country is a cataclysm, I’m going to quit my job. I […]

There is no beautiful way to say some things. You left and then I was sad. Around me, June fell like little droplets, imbibing life into an empty canvas. I wish you could love me the way I wanted you to. These days I can’t help but mourn it all: the black cat I had […]

It’s better now that it’s rained. Wave petrichor to the fire seasonEarly January and the snow capped mountains i’ve been waiting forall year. Leave it up to the firefighters, leave it up to Fate.Nothing left to ruin, nothing left to burn.Old calculus tests and annotated textbooks litter my desk in the outline ofThe San Gabriels […]

Near the depot. Black plumes escape and dissipate, like night-bats. Remember that anniversary when we stumbled across a dead fox on our hike? An auspice? In Indiana, a man with a cigarette habitually tucked behind both ears said, “The kismet control has a lotta knobs.” I’ve always loved candles because they have ceilings. And what’s felt can melt. We’re […]

someone modded the test-flight simulatorto scrape the sun with their fingernailsor crash out into the creek behind your old housetumbling through briar brushforehead cracked on oak the suspect steadied over unpaved gravelhardly graced the ground, flickereddown the street, laid out under the unbuilt warehouse gazed up. someone said it’s still 2010 out thereif you just […]