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 75, Poetry

Marigold by Kandace Siobhan Walker

Your eyes are the soil around a depressed white root. Nematodes will eat you out of the bathroom mirror when you feel quiet and laboured and you want less nights. Work a fingertip into the dirt and tell me, what is alive? And you know it is everything. Even you. Just as there is always […]

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Everything, issue 75, Poetry

Somebody Else’s Bones by Kit Evans

Eleven, that’s all you’ll ever be.Dark-haired kid holding your face downin a pool, howling Don’t touch me, faggot.Sounds like Touch me, faggotin a world of burning water.  Thirteen, eat a weak punch to the teeth, let himlick away the hurt, tell him you’re sorry you didn’t make it more believable.Mud gritting your mouth, pinned to the […]

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Everything, issue 75, Poetry

A Jinx, A Curse, A Broken Charm by Kiyanna Hill

I’ve always known too much, bornadherent I entered the world with a shavingof my mother’s hippocampus curvingagainst my palm. I urge / I warn / I caution:it’s dying, it’s gasping for water.This is a family of burdened women. These bodies won’t make it to 30. This is the beginning of genealogy, of lineage, of a door with a […]

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Everything, issue 75, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2022 

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators space neon neon space by luna rey hall space neon neon space is a striking collection on the body. luna’s voice is strong & momentous, and explores language with movement that will give you shivers! PTSD Poems to Slay Demons by Robin L Harvey Author Robin […]

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Everything, issue 75, Opportunities for Artists & Writers

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | September 2022

Drizzle Review: “We are open to submissions all year long! We exclusively publish reviews, essays, and interviews that celebrate marginalized writers. Our reviews cover work by authors who are: Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, women, disabled, chronically ill, rural and economically disenfranchised.” No fee.  EMERGENT LITERARY: “an assemblage of black and brown work. For […]

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Everything, Issue 74, Poetry

pareidolia in the form of a lamprey by Liam Strong

hypothesis:            ur seeing moons in the face            of the moon. yeah every nite is            full w/ ur moon in the face            of another man. oh he the Dreamworks             logo. he hooked. he dipping            his toes into ur ribs. in the morning            ur blanket is a milky cloud. a rabbit             humping another rabbit. ur toes            scare […]

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Everything, Issue 74, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2022

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Togetherness by Wo Chan  Togetherness sends out sparks from its electric surface, radiating energy and verve from within its deep and steady emotional core: stories of the poet’s immigrant childhood spent in their family’s Chinese restaurant, culminating in a deportation battle against the State. These narrative threads […]

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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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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 73, Prose, vagabond city

Strangers: Cricket and the Passage of Time by Zaq Baker

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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Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

The Boy and I by Noelle McManus

The boy and I make nicebecause there’s too much sufferingand send messages through the flight patternsof migratory birdsand when his answers cawat my window I open it upand cut cloacas in my breaststo let thefat outand I tell him “I’ll get you your surgery somedayI promise”and he says “black feathers blue feathers south.” Noelle McManus […]

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Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

Long Distance Dating as Told by Dreams and Special Relativity by Casey Reiland

I dream of Einstein     and lightning   describe the splintered            tree to you over text how I saw the blitz coming                 before anyone else          You write to me about                                space   about time                   that gravity affects      how the days   slip away       like a whale                        pulling […]

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Everything, Issue 73, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2022 

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas: Alive to the beauty and anxiety of new worlds and people, Iguana Iguana imagines a tough and tender soundtrack for tumbleweeds in search of roots. Recursive, deliberate, and as adaptive as their titular lizard, these poems invite us to listen so […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 72, Prose, vagabond city

Stonescript by Ryan Tan

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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Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

35mm by Em Norton

35mm the next time i take you to my parents’ house     it’s better            we leave the catholics out of it and i am at least three quarters  of a person      mom cooks & cooks  hot chicken wings & honey garlic  my sister’s   favourite      a […]

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Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

Elegy @ Coney Island by Nancy Huang

Nancy Huang grew up in America and China. She is a Sewanee, VONA, Tin House, Watering Hole, and Pink Door fellow. Her debut poetry collection, Favorite Daughter, is out by Write Bloody Publishing. Her poetry, plays, and prose are published by The Offing, Cosmonauts Avenue, poets.org, The Margins, and film distribution company A24. She has […]

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Everything, Issue 72, Now Read This

Now Read This: June 2022

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators La Movida by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta: Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta croons in the voice of a lovesick teenaged folklorist time traveler about revolution, housework, anti-colonialism, folk tales, post-punk, anti-fascism, anorexia, and alcoholism. Named both for the Chicana feminist concepts of revolutionary maneuvers and submerged technologies of struggle and the explosive […]

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Everything, Issue 72, Opportunities for Artists & Writers

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | June 2022

Baest Journal: “a journal of queer forms & affects … all forms of submissions are welcome, including poetry, essays, reviews, (non)fictions, soundscapes, appendages of new media, monsters that could be called ‘theories,’ archives, past-and-present times, meanderings, hybrid beings, artistries, creations, excretions, hypnagogic ramblings, & whatever else seems fit to email to baestjournal@gmail.com.” No deadline. No fee.  […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

Restriction by Katey Linskey

Birds dive for fish, backdropped by pinkhaze. I watch them disregard breaking wavesand sink shamelessly for what they want. Watermelon, two eggs, five dates. I runmy daily list of what I ate. A net negative,I decide. I roll over onto my stomach, eye-level with the sand. Crabs dartbetween holes. So tentative, they scareat the tapping […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

i thought about you again by Eli Shaw

yesterday, while lugging a box up the stairsto my new apartment, lungs aching in thestink of a hundred cracked and rotting pears soupy with august under their mother, green and sweetness-heavy. it once would’ve conjuredan image of us, older, in a perfect little domesticcountryside life somewhere, called to mind the songs about dizzying and soft love i collected […]

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