Issues

Hair kept unkempt to flow in the       wind. Clouds reign over the sea by this road. Tires sear the pavement       with our passion so hard we leaveblue embers behind. Ankles on       dashboards, sunglasses in rainbow.Skin on skin, the tenderness of a       hand, of a laugh. Peach fuzz & smiles.The horizon: blushing red like a       first kiss, ensnaring our eyes someplace warmer […]

on our last day of happiness she drove me to the Tennessee borderfists clenched on the wheel through the crowded interstate turnsbefore tumbling into the never-far-away fringes of nowhere, forestbreaking a fever in the mid-afternoon sun. she parks illegally, tugs down her sunglasses, and we wind into the humid heavyjade and emerald shadows. it’s taking too […]

after Eleanor Wikstrom & while writing this, mā,      i am still learning how your absencebites my body bare under      yellowed street lamps,carves tragedy or myth or memory      out of a girl’s womb. mā, is this thedistance between girl & womanhood? tonight, against the cold-     faced concrete, i sketch the city skyline, traceevery path we took down the alleys. […]

flowers froth-blooming:carmine and daffodil, orchid and violetgreen glimmering alien iridescenceautumn winding throughthe karmic wheel, edifice of lifestraddling life, the earthbleeding earth, briefcracking clouds, a secondlate blooming still alivelate but not too late. nourishing the bones of my quiet aether behindthe ginkgo tree, kicking crabapples asidejoy, resurrection, andfaeries made from pegs withclear gray eyesthe children of […]

We hurt people that love usLove people that hurt usWe say we want to date our best friendAnd end up dating someone we are afraid our friends will hateI think I can collapse everything to rules and principlesI live in a world of impressions and outlinesEveryone is a representation of their identitiesWhen I overhear conversations […]

after Ilya Kaminsky Gabrielle Bonifacio is a wistful Media Studies graduate with a minor in German and playlist-making. She writes in the hope of liberation and safety for all peoples, from Palestine to the Philippines. Her work has most recently appeared in thewildnessjournal. 

Last week, I couldn’t afford therapy,so I bought flowers instead.Ranunculi and roses, fern and blazing star.A modest bouquet of beauty,beholden only to the breeze between.Unlike me—modernity’s stupid bride.Wringing my dread, counting my debt.It’s endless, endless. Dial a friend,thread our lament. We pledge allegiance todespair, we drown in ocean breath.On a walk toward nowhere, my mom […]

In plastic chairs over fake grassconvenience store sangriapoured over icecheers to summer and your newjob I’ll miss you in the officemiss walking home with you toour respective homeslaughing next you’re shoutingat the man above in hisapartment who yelled downthat he didn’t like ushe was drunkyour laugh you sawthe ridiculousness in everythingand when the police cameyou […]

after Daniel Mallory Ortberg “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation” and here i amstaring at the crease in my elbow like i used to stare at hisand wondering what […]

A man of God told me once that self-mythologizing is the greatest sin. He asked me what I prayed for and I could not answer,  from my paper mouth. It became a fig tree, blossoming, rooting me in depth and height distractions. The fig tree was God but the tree  was me but the tree […]

I can’t remember how long it’s beensince I’ve sung a whole song, painted a whole picture, written a poem wholeenough to make me love who I am & all the while, my throat is fullof broken notes                       small blue-winged swallows. They stab at flesh […]

How could the moon have been likenedto cheese—wedge?—hardly appropriate.Possessing the delicacy of an orphanedeyelash, a demure sun-inspired stature,the moon is perfectly placed, not forced. Why was that easier to write than the title? It’s not that I’m bored of Ode to the Moonbut why would I read it when I can readOde to his Five […]