Issues

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 […]

after Jane Kenyon’s “Otherwise” They took the village that stood behind us. It might have been otherwise. We heard gunshots tearing the bodies of our neighbors. We heard the houses of our friends yelling as they burned and threw their particles at the sky, but the skin of our houses was as clean as a […]

On the sidewalk behind the middle school at dusk, flashlight pointed down in the dark, spade in hand, standing before the overgrown field, I remembered  the guilt of loving a boy. Of burying that love, the future’s burden. That night I needed to know if I’d once loved and only learned not to, or if I never  loved at […]

In my head there’s an old man who says “GPS is for pussies” at war with an old man who says “hemorrhoid cushions are for pussies” so i’m not how you say deep but i learned a few things working at the butterfly exhibit one it’s possible to surround yourself with beautiful things and not […]

“Community Outreach” originally appeared in Trans Survivors Zine: Healing in Action, published by FORGE. Big gay non profit is rough with me. Breaks my limits hard and soft alike. Apologizes with day-old bagels and wilted cream cheese in the breakroom, left over from a mandatory training about pronouns. They tell us that we’ll get through […]

I’m not sure how to talk to my father anymore.I know how to reach out to him, but I don’t thinkI can make that effort after this election. I have tothink about what’s on his TV and the circles hefilled in on the ballot, and how all that makes mewant to do is take my […]

Neal Allen Shipley (he/him) is a behavior analyst living in Colorado with a modest collection of pets and an unhinged collection of plants. His other work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Impostor, Creation Magazine, The Talon Review, and SCAB Magazine, among others. Despite the horrors, he loves a […]

Tonight I think no poetry can serve: no earnest coupletsabout the marvel of queer love being how it just is; no conceit sustained long enough to create policy change,to bring back the queers killed before or after me; no simile acute enough to capture the acrid pit of my stomachas another queer teen is bullied […]

You’re well-hidden in the womb of the earth.Then you sprout up, very small, and nobody notices.No animals have touched you yet.Your branch loses some of your greenage, some of your green.Then you have children, which are green in the springand orange in the fall. When you grow up,you have birds and squirrels nesting in your […]

say the table turns intoa face unimaginable.say there’s a prairie fire in thewintertime lights up the darksky in the afternoon.say the deer’s eyes get caughtin a flashlight while grazing for grassin the snow. say the clock ticks backwards onthe wall going 1 to 12pm. everybody walking backwardswithout turning around to see wherethey are going or […]

Marianne Cassidy (they/them) is a writer, game developer and narrative designer. They are half English, half Canadian, and live in Durham, UK, with two ageing cats and too many spider plants. You can find them at @mothshaped on Bluesky.

How many times can I tell this story before it corrodes. I am tired, I don’t know who I am anymore. I wake in the middle of the night and stare at a water glass. What would my life be if I had stayed? If I hadn’t swapped visual art for creative writing. The questions […]

Plato I had gone to your chapelon a wintry November night.Your sage scattered everywhere—in the air, in the water,in the earth, where I stareddeeply into the well of your eyes,a kind of abyssal charm.I went barefoot to see you.I climbed up the hillunflinchingly, Plato.I hauled your books like a bovine yakup the hillbilly brae of […]