Issue 79, review, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-born Englishman who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, reminds readers that humans and robots both fall under the definition of ‘being’. Klara and the Sun does not just include the loss of being when devoting everything to serving higher-ups, but explores spirituality and mortality, seeking God when God does […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 78, review

In Review: Susan Nguyen’s Dear Diaspora

In her debut poetry collection, Dear Diaspora, Susan Nguyen engages us in a conversation on grief and ecstasy, and how those two seemingly juxtaposed experiences are intrinsically linked. Winner of Prairie Schooner’s Book Prize in Poetry, Dear Diaspora was published in 2021 by the University of Nebraska Press. Nguyen is exploring grief as it’s related […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 78, Now Read This

Now Read This: December 2022

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed In Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman’s body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

chatoyancy and release by Vanessa Couto Johnson

We are all initial-ly named what our families can say.Glanced and category theorized, my morphismsurvives to asterism, even as dopped cabochon.To rock the dome is a beautiful breakage,if it happens. Cleave define or indefinite-ly or to infinite stroked to part-icle spark—when -ever it turnsout my grain can do all that and unbag. A Brazilian born […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

Poem I Never Submitted to Workshop by Daniel Felsenthal

Here I am wonderingIf my poetry will make meA goddamn Master of Fine ArtsAnd you with your talking blues. Sometimes entire days pass and one thinks aboutJust money. It’s toxic.Aren’t weekends forDrinking beer and lemonadeAnd getting fucked?Count your blessingsFor they comeEvery few weeks.In betweenDream-crawl orWrite an ars poetica:You know the form so well. Now that […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 77, Poetry

(NORF NORF) by Julián David Bañuelos

I’ve always tried to proceed with caution. The few things we owned I made sure not to break. How selfish could a poor brown boy be? Let alone three? Grassless backyards and baseballs there we were. Unminding any manner we learned in a country that molded & scolded us. America’s past time to pass time, […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 77, Now Read This

Now Read This: November 2022 

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Prescribee by Chia-Lun Chang Reading Prescribee is not dissimilar to the experience of coming across a recipe in a vintage American cookbook: it transforms the familiar ingredients of contemporary life into an uncanny, discomfiting concoction. Wielding English as a foreign language and medium, Chang redefines the […]

Read more
Everything, Issue 77

VC’s Pushcart Prize Nominations

CNF:Aftertaste of Coffee by Simra Sadaf (Issue 72)Finding Grace by Sam Frost (Issue 75) Fiction:Daughter of a King by Shaelin Bishop (Issue 69)Sprout by Morgan Dick (Issue 74) Poetry:Tehillim 96 by Miriam Saperstein (Issue 70)Sonnet Against Capitalism by Timothy Otte (Issue 67)

Read more
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 […]

Read more
Art, Everything, Issue 77

Join the VC Team: Call for a New Art Editor

We have a new opening for one volunteer position: Art Editor. See below for application details. Please note: all staff positions are volunteer and are thus unpaid. All positions are also virtual/remote. We encourage applicants who are members of marginalized groups (LGBTQIA, POC, WOC, women, disabled folks, etc.), but all are welcome to apply. Please […]

Read more
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, […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more