Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

poem in which you can’t hurt me by Annalisa Hansford

in this poem, you don’t hurl my body               against gravel as my memories of you bleed into grief. my blood staining               the stones your favorite color: my hurt. in this poem, i scream and someone hears.               when i’m released from your grip, your fingers don’t leave imprints on my body.               in this poem, there is no reminder of the […]

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Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

THIS IS AN END OF THE YEAR POEM by Lucas Peel

which is categorically the best kindof end poem. Not by choice; by absenceof leaving. This year, we learned aboutdetritus, Tik Tok algorithms, how to tracethe leavings-behind of extra ordinarycreatures. Our oldest cat, oncea neighborhood apex predator, hashad her butthole shaved for hygienic.Let the new year grant us all some kindof discretion. Last night, I followeda […]

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Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

Fracture by Jillian Clasky

Jillian Clasky is a writer from Toronto. She currently lives in Ottawa, where she is pursuing a BA in English and creative writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as Claw & Blossom and Polyphony Lit, and she was commended in the 2022 Adroit Prizes. She serves as Managing Editor of Common House, the University of […]

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Everything, Issue 83, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: May 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators This Conversation Is Being Recorded by Hannah Kezema Hannah Kezema’s hybrid debut, This Conversation Is Being Recorded, is a vibrant collection of poems and erasures of painted, dirtied, and flora-filled legal documents and interview notes from her experiences as an investigator and editor in the insurance […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: March 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Common Life by Stéphane Bouquet (translated by Lindsay Turner) In three poems, one play, and three short stories, Stéphane Bouquet’s Common Life offers a lively, searching vision of contemporary life, politics, and sociality. At a moment at which the fabric of everyday social life is increasingly threatened […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Opportunities for Artists & Writers, vagabond city

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | March 2023

Cipher Press is looking for book-length adult fiction and creative non-fiction submissions from both agented and unagented authors who identify as LGBTQI+. Send all submissions to both jack [at] cipherpress.co.uk and ellis [at] cipherpress.co.uk with the subject line Submission: fiction, Submission: non-fiction, or Submission: poetry. Deadline: March 31st A Public Space Writing Fellowships is open for […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

Sapphic Stanza 3 by Candace Walsh

Dinosaur egg rocks, clefts and declivities. Virga daubs sky over mesa achingly. Acid-green lichen. I long to be the sun’s last rake through your hair. Candace Walsh is a queer, multi-genre writer in her fourth year as a PhD student in creative writing (fiction) at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

I’m eating an orange by Aekta Khubchandani

and polar bears are dyingon my laptop screen.Black ducks floating backwards, a back-bending sun, the see-sawing skyits bed. My iPhone tells me sunflowers face each otherwhen they can’t spot the sun. I’m eating peaches and living by the riverin my head; sparrows are hopping onto branches with last leaves. How much has changed with weather,much has changed and withered. I’m wearing […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

ANDROGYNE by Anastasia Walker

in dreams a      wherea hole      should be      a bodypregnant      with ache, withwords      don’t meanyou, what is      whoand where to      find, fixthe shimmer      wind lickedprismatic, amphibious      lung-tied but fervent     for gills, waterbound      but wingedthe […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

Chicken Imitations by James Croal Jackson

We made Arrested Development-esque chicken imitationsat the restaurant– bakawk, cheep-cheep, wakka wakka– being young, I thought that was the language of love.We always laughed across the chasm of the room when we shut shop, squeezing soap rags into heart buckets,wiping fresh clear streaks on mahogany tables. I vacuumed pita crumbs and invisible dust, emptied bags […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

Being Ill by Aiyana Masla

Laying stillhas ripped opena thin, temporal levity on a morningit is snowingmy own worth revealed to me again & again, againan    incandescent    nothingness. Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020).  Her work has appeared in Cordella Press, Field Notes, West Trestle Review, in the collection So Many Ways to […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

Transsexual Daydreams by Apollo Chastain

i.An angel came to me the otherday, said “Wanna make out in mycar?” I’ve not been so keen onthat sort of thing sincedysphoria set in, the guilty teethof wolverines sliding scalpel-sharpin the space beneath my breasts. Butthis wasn’t a beautiful command, norwas it the word of God:The angel pleads like 50s loungesingers in with the […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

apology scribbled on the back of a receipt for a jar of green olives by Madeline Langan

hey,super sorry forthrowing up on your couch last night  missed the antique hunter green velvet thanks to the deli bag you haphazardly tossed over  never knew i could havesuch good aim i keep doing thisThing – not the puking but thebleeding mascarabuying myself baby’s breatheating crumpledvalentines losing my left shoeneeding you to find itasking my therapistwhyit-is-so-hard-to-be-lovedthree months laterstill i can’t believea […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 77, Prose, vagabond city

The Failure Gene by Chris Klassen

At precisely ten o’clock on the morning of March 23, the spokesperson of the World Health Organization entered the press room and walked up to the microphone. Assembled in front of him were reporters and bloggers from the international media community. The majority represented mainstream newspapers, television channels, podcasts and websites. A few were fringe […]

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Everything, Issue 76, Poetry, vagabond city

Spin Out by Molly Williams

A girl on the plane says, I was stuckwith all these crazy people and I wasnormal. Incredibly, I say, Same same.It was not I who pulled madnessfrom the water. My arms are my own.But everything I’m saying is true:nothing real has changed. Thesewhiskers, these black eyes were there all along—what am I becoming, I say, […]

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Everything, Issue 76, Poetry, vagabond city

inter-sex by Lorelei Bacht

every morning, it sings – but it is not pretty: bird’s nestinstead of hair, purple accordions lacerating the thighs. if icould make a wish: winged, angelic, anything but the meat. one slight adrenal mis-calculation leadingto rogue, to roam, to in-visibly dis-abled: if my mother had known. had slept on it. but imperfectly to perceive, to […]

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Art, Everything, interview, Issue 76, vagabond city

An interview with Jonathan MacGregor

button upOil on canvas Introduction I think for any creative, world-building is a big undertaking that pushes the limits of creativity. Thinking expansively to create an environment, society, and characters that serve a purpose to explore that world is a continual showcase of imaginative prowess. When that process comes together it creates a rich, imaginative […]

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Everything, Issue 76, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: October 2022

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators A Queen in Bucks County by Kay Gabriel In A Queen in Bucks County, our protagonist Turner, who both is and is not the writer, makes his pleasurable way through miserable space. Men “buy him things,” lovers drive across state lines, users down volatile cocktails to […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 76, vagabond city

Un/natural by Marianne Cassidy

The marks appeared overnight. I was drinking microwaved coffee in the kitchen when Brady emerged from our bedroom, pajama bottoms hanging off his hips. His mark sat, prominent, on his naked shoulder. “What’s that?” “What’s what?” “There’s something on your shoulder.” It stayed when I went to wipe it away, and the colour didn’t change […]

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Everything, Issue 74, vagabond city

Best of the Net Nominees

Art:Dirty Laundry pt 2. by Amy Chu (Issue 68)Pup at the End of the World (Burning Field) by Ben Herbert (Issue 72) CNF:Dear Mummiji by Bhumika Muchhala (Issue 66)Wash N Ride: A Teen’s Quest for Power and Identity by Jess Moor (Issue 71) Fiction:The Most Beautiful Things Could End Us by Zach Murphy (Issue 68)After […]

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Art, Everything, interview, Issue 74, vagabond city

tinder notifications, political regimes, and Chromatica Oreos : an interview with Yuyang Zhang

Marrying contemporary chaos with the imagery found on his phone screen, Yuyang Zhang (he/him) is an image-maker with a distinct “tongue-in-cheek” point of view. Yuyang’s inspiration and imagery comes far and wide: Chinese propaganda posters, Marvel’s television series WandaVision, iPhone emojis, or his love of sports cars. In this interview, we talk about his image […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 74, Prose, vagabond city

Sprout by Morgan Dick

There’s a look Dallas gets on his face when he’s about to lose his shit. His lip curls, his eyeballs shake inside their sockets, and it makes you wonder: is this really a four-year-old boy and not some Antichrist birthed from a jackal and hidden amongst human children with the aim of mankind’s eventual destruction?  […]

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