This winter, we simmered. We became beings sunken beneath water, boiling. We became beings, warm and thinking, looking back. We were destroyed. Our cells were returned to the world as heat as we sat, invisible in our nothingness, floating or sinking or maybe being nothing at all, maybe just nothing, warmed, nothing, stripped, nothing, stunning light or darkness.
During our time as nothing, we wrote on the backs of our receipts. We saw in sepia. We pruned our fingers in juice of mango. Stuck in the corners. Landlocked, waterlogged. Crawling through water, still gyrating in a rolling boil, waiting for our return. Never content without us. Could feel what was missing.
In our own words, we returned. Piece by piece. Molecule by molecule. More fungus than stardust. Catastrophic in our sadness. But still here. But back.
From everything to nothing and back again.
We are not so many things. Not. Not. Not. We try not to think about the nots in our souls and the knots in our spine as we become again. We tried to become.
Together, we became.
Whole, even if we needed to be swallowed, first, to do so.
| BEE WALSH | ON OLD POTS AND NEW YEARS | 1.1 |
| FORTESA LATIFI | SEPIA | 1.2 |
| BETHANY MARY | THIS WILL DESTROY YOU | 1.3 |
| MERYEM NUH | I AM AN ATLANTEAN EFFORT ON MYSELF | 1.4 |
| LENA GARCIA | CEILING | 1.5 |
| EMILY ALEXANDER | ODE TO MONTEREY BAY//OR//THE FIRST POEM THAT IS NOT ABOUT LOSS | 1.6 |
| SOPHIA TERAZAWA | RITES OF AN OLD WAR | 1.7 |
| LAKSHMI MITRA | SITA | 1.8 |
| ABBY CARON | MOONGIRL (WHO CARES?) | 1.9 |
| CLAIR DUNLAP | A STONEFRUIT | 1.10 |
| MARTINA DOMINIQUE DANSEREAU | MEMORIES OF LOVING A GIRL WHO SANG THE SOUL ELECTRIC | 1.11 |
| SUSANNAH BETTS | LOOKING LOW | 1.12 |
| TORII JOHNSON | OPEN SEASON | 1.13 |
| AUNG.ROBO | FAGGOT YOUTH | 1.14 |
| MCKENZIE DIAL | EVERYTHING TO NOTHING | 1.15 |
| ANDISWA ONKE MAQUTU | DARK BEAUTY | 1.16 |
| AUNG.ROBO | SAVE BLACK BODIES | 1.17 |
| MARTINA DOMINIQUE DANSEREAU | GIRL, INTERRUPTED | 1.18 |
| TORII JOHNSON | DEGREES / OF / SEPARATION | 1.19 |
| SUSANNAH BETTS | SHARK + GIRAFFE | 1.20 |
| MARTINA DOMINIQUE DANSEREAU | THE ANATOMY OF A PIXIE GIRL DROWNING | 1.21 |
| NL SHOMPOLE | VENUS FADING FROM THE SKY | 1.22 |
| TORII JOHNSON | MOTION SICKNESS | 1.23 |
| VANYA TRUONG | 3 PIECES | 1.24 |
| JASMINE SIERRA | WHEN I FIRST WENT INTO THE OCEAN I | 1.25 |
| NIKI GAINES | FEATURED ARTIST | 1.26 |
VAGABOND CITY 