Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators the luxury by Darren C. Demaree “In the luxury, Darren C. Demaree constructs a response to the catastrophic death of the natural world that enacts rage, love, and grief all at once. Filled with endless lyricism and an unpunctuated momentum, Demaree’s poems cascade and overflow. As […]
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Canthius is open for unpublished prose and poetry submissions from writers of marginalized gender identities, including trans, Two Spirit, non-binary, agender, cis women, genderqueer, GNC, and intersex writers. Deadline: March 15th. Chronicle Books is currently accepting applications for one-year paid editorial fellowships in the Art Publishing Group, the Entertainment Publishing Group, and the Children’s Publishing […]
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Check out Emily Stoddard’s list of publishers publishing poetry manuscripts, including publishers with no fees or fees-waived opportunities Applications for PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship are due on January 31st. Applicants must be at least 21, must reside in the U.S. at the time of applying for, and during the duration of, the fellowship, must […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Common Life by Stéphane Bouquet and 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 […]
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for Symil heres’s a secret: where I come from,all the fairytales begin with instead, and my neck has earnedits permanent ache from looking backeven though there is no one left to save. in this life the window shares its own desolation and grief is stored in miniature paper cups.some days I miss my old transformations,the kind that turned braid […]
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Transition, sacrament of selfTo die at twenty-two and start anewThis is my body given for you To return the same, but changed–the hero’s journey Do this in remembrance of me Charlie Divine is a current student at Portland Community College studying American Sign Language/English Interpreting. They live with their 32 houseplants in the shrub-steppe of rural Oregon.
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no seriouslytake ithere’s my passcode there’s likeover 200 finished poems on there nowplus drafts of old textsyou already have plusevery drunk thoughteveryone’s numberevery tinder chatevery bored selfiea few nudesit will take youyears to get through everything there’s also a 250+ page google docof my spark notes for a new economybet your girlfriend’s read some of thoseanywaythere are passwordsperiod appsshopping […]
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Delete the voicemail before the end. Win. Burn the letter. Smear the ash into the sidewalk. Win. No, save the letter for the restraining order. Lose. Decide against filing the police report. Cops are transphobic already. Lose. File it after all. Feel worse. Lose. Order pizza. Panic at the doorbell. Lose. Forget to close the […]
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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 […]
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Turtle Mountain wasn’t really a mountain. Standing eighteen metres short of the accepted geological classification of 300 metres, it was technically a hill. This was a widely espoused fact in my neighbourhood, square in the landmass’s disappointing shadow. The Turtle Mountain High class of ‘96 famously taped together twenty yardsticks and planted the end into […]
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Little Sister The scene is Dad on a staircase. Yellow air. Sticky-sick sounds formulating. “He’s like an angel.” There was a banal frame, Macy’s-like, with husband, mother, daughter, son-brother. “It’s the white shirt.” There are screams. There is a mother clasping head between arms between legs and cracked-door. Legs and arms and matted hair. There […]
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My mother broke herself into so many pieces that when she glued herself back together there were some shards she would never find. One day, she decided to stop trying to fix herself and focus her attention on shaping someone else. So she adopted a baby from China. She would mold this child into a […]
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When I was four, I told everyone that my mother was a stuffed rabbit, but only because my father told me this himself. He is a toymaker, and the night after my mother died, he gave it to me and said this was her now. This was where she had gone. I accepted this because […]
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Art is something I’ve always been drawn to. It’s a whole world of possibilities and ideas that can influence culture and society. On the other hand it can be something that looks pretty, and looks great hung on a wall. There can be so much and so little that goes into art making, where artists […]
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The Most Beautiful Things Could End Us by Zach Murphy a grocery list by Kelly Stohr Stonescript by Ryan Tan
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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 […]
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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 […]
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i am walking against the cold without much effort. lucky, because my mind is unconcerned with my legs and is working quite hard on optic flow. funny, you never notice a thing like optic flow until it runs with a bit of a lag. suddenly i am still and watching the pavement unfold and the […]
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I’m wearing a lavender gownand holding up the waist ofmy Carhartts with both handslike I’m in a potato sack race — we have to stop meeting like this The same nurse as last timegreets the scrambled output of my EKG reading with a too-long silence: OddI’ve never seen it do this before The gap between thunder and […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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In north central Oklahoma, otherwise gorgeous with luscious hills and curiously red dirt, litter abounds: Styrofoam Chick-fil-A cups, empty cigarette packs, and, beginning in 2020, discarded face masks. I’d started a green neighborhood initiative in the small Oklahoma town that my now-wife and I called home. The goal was not only to pick up trash, […]
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The start of cold nights, strong winds, and early sunsets always make November a hard month to adjust to. With summer days long past, and a new year on the horizon it makes the passage of time feel like a physical phenomena. Or it could just be the cold seeping into my bones. Contemplation of […]
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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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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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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, […]
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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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In her new chapbook, Bodies of Separation, Chim Sher Ting examines the connecting threads and thread snips that tie and break identity. In this collection from Cathexis Northwest Press, Ting crafts poems that play with her Singaporean-Chinese heritage, culture, and language. By drawing upon the images and phrases of her youth and how they have […]
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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 […]
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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)
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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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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 […]
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Read Part 1 of the interview here. “Anatomy of a Fish Hook” is one of my favorites. There’s this tension between the lovers but it’s also quite a sexy poem. How do you go about starting to write an intimate scene? What sort of language do you find yourself gravitating toward the most when writing […]
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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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Each morning I watch the world Through two layers of glass Check for signs of my cold breathIn the winter air of the internet— Am I living? Can you remind meWhat that looks like? Is it enough To lie in my room with the fan slow Shifting in compression socksAs light crescendos towards day With no further […]
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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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there is the world and there you arein it. tired for years. you drive northeaston a cloudy midmorning. the air hangsheavy around the car. the car hangsheavy in the air and clings to its staticframe. space sinks and stretches. onceyou were a child, you imagined your adultbody. the space between your eyes anddangling feet. the […]
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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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Gender, addiction, and motherhood elicit spiritual visions of both pain and euphoria in Sara Moore Wagner’s poetry collection Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press, November 2022). Girlhood and Change The collection begins with “Fit to be Tied,” where two girls sit outside on a summer night, dreaming of what lies ahead. They know change is coming, but […]
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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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Mizna Journal: “Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists … Contributors do not need to identify as of Arab/SWANA descent, provided their work is of relevance to or in dialogue with the social realities of the SWANA/Arab […]
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It’s a very practical form of self-harm, I say reasonably. Sensibly. My voice is measured, even chipper. It’s free, easy, quiet, and leaves no physical trace…what more can you ask for? I sound like a salesperson on commission. You hate me for it. My grin grows wider without mirth, like a fox baring its fangs. […]
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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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Years ago I was walking through a building at my university and found an abandoned copy of An Introduction to Symbolic, 3rd Edition by Susanne K. Langer. I love a free book, so I had to take it. The book really intrigued me since I had no clue what “Symbolic Logic” even was. I learned […]
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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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In this once-was of gardens and succulents behaving madly, who has the ability to call themselves delighted? I want to be variegated with leaves so new I’ll turn to deer and eat my own tenderness. In this difference of Sundays, I want to hear—a molten of gospel, among tuft-y grassesand yellow irises. All chanting in shapes […]
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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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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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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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VAGABOND CITY 