Back when I was urging my heart to flow into slow circles, Grace parked her old, blue convertible across the street and met me at the front door of my apartment building. We stood there, smiled, moved into some sort of embrace we hadn’t fully formed, and I followed her back down the steps. She […]
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For a moment after my mother closed the bathroom door, I stood on the other side, listening. Water was rushing into the tub. I pictured my mother stepping out of her pink house slippers, her blue skirt, taking off her gold jewelry and laying them by the soap dish. After the faucet turned off, I […]
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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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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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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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My mother emails me, unsubtly, a study on the correlation between rain and depression, so I promise to be alert, hand on heart. I stay wary of it, killing every cloud I see. In winter a storm lets itself in anyways: wailing, petulant. It sticks to the roof of my mouth for nights on nights, […]
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Ever since Hu and Javed and I started making music together, I’ve been trying to tease apart whether Noor’s sense of humor is obligatory-host-dad, ingratiated-Midwestern-sarcastic, or something else entirely. It can’t possibly be Pakistani, can it? Late yesterday afternoon he greeted me with a stonefaced stare: “You are not welcome here.” He didn’t crack a […]
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Perhaps you’ve seen me in Central Park, a tall, white-haired woman in an emerald green polo shirt with a rectangular logo and the kind of khaki shorts made popular during the Raj. My official uniform and photo ID confirm my skill as a volunteer tour guide. I greet visitors from around the world. Most are […]
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I’ve always seen art as a way to get to know people. Interpretations of work and approaches to artistic practice being a great conversation to understand the intimacies of a creative’s mind beyond talking about the weather. When I met this month’s spotlighted artist, Juan Astudillo, we were doing an artist residency in New York […]
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It was that time of the year in my city. Thunderstorm. Heavy rainfall. Violent winds. Blackout. While it brings inconvenience to most, for me, it happens to be the best time of the year. Nothing to distract me from reading. No Internet, no Netflix, no one to ask me for tea making favours and no […]
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I bought a fishing boat and sprinkled twelve life jackets around the deck. On the day of the tour, I wore a durian-patterned shirt with the Singapore Tourism Board logo on the breast pocket. Aaron, a bearded teenager with poop emoji earrings, shoved fifty dollars at me without asking for my license. “I study ancient […]
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Highlighting recently released works by marginalized creators THE LOST CONVERSATION: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde by Sara Farrington“In this collection of interviews conducted between 2019-2021 with New York theater artists who have spent their lives working in and inventing the avant-garde, playwright Sara Farrington brings to light a series of “lost conversations” about class, race, […]
Read moreBeing her family history’s archivist while weaving a story of her own, Thương Hoài Trần (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Combining their training in printmaking with newfound skills in fibers, she documents a familial immigrant story told to them through word-of-mouth and old photographs. How would you introduce yourself as an […]
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The red and purple lights that seep into the windows from the carwash infuses the atmosphere with a tantalizing tone, one that I am all too familiar with at this point in my life. Like any other 17-year-old high school junior, I am wired. I am antsy. I am using this opportunity as a mission […]
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pistachio milk a refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk floorboards upon which to set the refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk kitchen walls that house the floorboards upon which to set the refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk apartment ceiling to support the kitchen walls that house the floorboards […]
Read moreHighlighting recently released works by marginalized creators Aerial Concave Without Cloud by Sueyeun Juliette Lee “Aerial Concave Without Cloud is a collection of poetry steeped in the bluest apocalypse light of solar collapse and the pale, ghostly light of personal devastation and grief. Through a combination of academic research and the salp’uri dance form, Sueyeun Juliette […]
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Beestung Special issue: TRANS IS THE FUTURE. THE FUTURE IS TRANS.: “For this special issue of beestung, we’re seeking works by nonbinary and two-spirit writers that cross not only gender but also genre and form. We want your barely-legible; your not-fiction, not-poetry, and definitely-not-binary words. We want speculative work that can only do what it does […]
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There is something special about seeing an artist create a self-portrait. Through a self-portrait you can analyze what an artist finds valuable, what they overlook, and how they wish to be perceived by their audience. For this month’s issue, I interviewed Jordan Ismaiel Ramsey (they/them), an artist committed to self-portraiture as a form of self-reliance. […]
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I only knew her for one night. She was performing a show where she screamed for two hours uninterrupted without a single variation in pitch. I had no plans for the evening. Over a Sazerac, the hotel bartender told me he’d won a ticket in a raffle for donating plasma and her performance had been […]
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Tacos de cabeza Beef head tacos. The love of your life. Only available in the morning. You have been eating tacos de cabeza since you were in your mother’s belly. You were born with tiny head tacos’ grease on your nose. There is a puestecito near the mercado in Obregón, Sonora. They were a few […]
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Artist, spider sculptor, Louise Bourgeois said, “You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.” I remember the last time I spoke to Catherine Lacey in person was at a New Year’s Eve party in Chicago, December 31, 2019. We ate lasagna. The world was different then. […]
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This month’s spotlighted artist is Malí Bilstad (they/them). Currently finishing up their degrees in Illustration and Theater at Iowa State University, Malí is an illustrator creating their own tales of childhood fantasy. By doing this they hope to create worlds that their audience can escape reality from and find themselves in. Who are you as […]
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When I was four years old and learning to read, my born-again Christian grandfather gifted me a children’s bible. I was unimpressed by this offering because I couldn’t read but the illustrations remain in my mind thirty-five years later, especially the ones involving the gory demise of Jesus at the end of the book. “Who […]
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The neighbours all thought we were con artists. Maybe they were right. We met while waiting to view the apartment and pretended to be sisters to charm the landlord. It was never about influence. It was only about shelter. We just wanted to escape the heat. The ruse was instantly believable, even to us. Our […]
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Tackling issues with post-grad life adjustment, work anxiety, and impulse purchases, Amy Chu (@camoot.journal) gives her viewers a multi-faceted look at modern day adult obstacles and the escapism she finds through imagination and art. A recent grad of SMFA Tufts in Boston, Amy’s work showcases her interest in vulnerability and storytelling while taking inspiration from […]
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My family has the luck of a penniless black cat at a high-stakes casino. When I was twelve, my mother, my father, and my older brother Jeffrey took a vacation to Hawaii. Jeffrey went surfing in the deep, blue ocean while I stayed ashore and observed jittery sand crabs as they popped in and out […]
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I pace the house looking for the dog, the ghost of the dog, the ghost of someone. The mother and dynasty and mausoleum I carry inside me. Something. It feels here but not, a muted anticipation, a phantom limb, when you brush the wall in the dark to hit the light switch you’ve struck a […]
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Inspired by ‘The Cool Girl Monologue’ (Gone Girl, 2014; Directed by David Fincher). I should’ve known that it wouldn’t work out between us. We were too different, too incongruous. And no matter what transpired among us, there was always one lingering question: were we ever truly in love? You fell for someone who never existed; […]
Read moreFor this month’s issue I interviewed Vicky Liang, an illustrator/artist currently based in New Jersey. Saccharine, round, and able to make one’s cheeks blush, Vicky’s illustrations capture innocent vision through singular pieces and small-page comics. Taking homage from her inspirations in children’s book illustration and Studio Ghibli media, Vicky incorporates elements such as anthropomorphic animals, […]
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VAGABOND CITY 