“You play too much for someone who’s becoming an adult.” “Not really.” We said breathlessly, with our flat chest heaving as we came to a stop before running smack! into our dad. Though that’s what happens when there’s more than one of us. Everything we do is at 2x speed or intensity and too much. […]
Read more
Cold has a sound in Minnesota. Not silence…but a pressure you feel in your teeth. The yard is stiff with frost, the grass pressed flat and drained of color. My breath shows itself immediately, a small cloud I can’t seem to control. I’ve lived in Indonesia long enough now that cold feels less like weather […]
Read more
Jerry was a strapping young kneecap who was out looking for some action, as he did every Saturday night. On the edge of the pavement he rocked from side to side, not that a kneecap really had sides as such. Out of the crowd another kneecap, tan to Jerry’s pallid form, rolled up beside him. […]
Read more
Wolves are found everywhere across Canada, in forests, mountains, lowlands, your city, your neighbourhood, your car, your home. You may be a wolf yourself. Grey Wolves may not even be grey. They live across the Cordillera, St. Lawrence Lowlands, Canadian Shield, are like dogs in demeanour, but shyer; you must approach them first if you […]
Read more
I could tell she was Dominican. At first that’s why I stared. I was placing her skin tone againstthose of my family and imagining what her lose curls would look like if straighten. I could tellthat straight is how she usually wore it since her hair is being weighed down by product. Shedoesn’t have a […]
Read more
The only thing my mother says that I believe is that I see what I want to see. You do, too. And so does she, but I don’t know if she believes what she says. I know this is true because she refuses to see objects as they really are, how they become when no […]
Read more
Submit Your Child’s Birthday Cake Request Below: The Child’s Name It would serve you better to know she’s like herself to be called Bluey Glooey, the queen of the scrappy toads. The ones she loves to chase around the pond of her grandmother’s house. Bluey because being blue is what makes her the queen, she […]
Read more
It isn’t really a hobby, thumbing off the flower heads of annual potted plants in my neighbourhood. It’s more of a habit, borderline ideological. You know, like plucking your eyebrows or hiding your nipples. It’s just that they sit there all summer long, these flowers, without any roots to look forward to, useless when they […]
Read more
Art Sunshine by Karissa Ho Orange Street by Frances Jane Sleger Conformity by Teresa Song CNF Outside the Box by Sara Streeter Pain as a Mediocre Symphony Orchestra by Luscha Makortoff Fiction El Camino Real by N.H. Van Der Haar The Bachelorette Party by Madeline Kaprich Poetry Mashhad, circa 1950: an iranian girl dreams by […]
Read more
after Ryan Van Meter’s “Things I Want To Say To You On Our First Date But Won’t” That as a small child I thought dating in high school would be unattainable—and maybe that was because my sole romantic exposure involved the novels of Jane Austen and the associated television programs, but still. That the eight-year-old […]
Read more
Since my dad died thirteen days before my bachelorette party, I have no choice but to bring him on the trip. Before I set off for Cancun, I pack all my white bikinis and show my fiancé my dad’s soul, which I’ve managed to place into a silver clamshell-shaped necklace. I kiss my fiancé goodbye, […]
Read more
A minor deity loiters in the parking lot outside the liquor store on Mannheim, where my ward works nights, scanning bottles of cheap whiskey and glossy packs of flavored cigarillos. This deity is a cagey beast. Upon his head he wears a crown of gnashing pitbull maws, all chomping and growling; the snouts are bruised […]
Read more
Redwoods have a propensity to sing. Not in a melodic, dictated line, but in painterly, impressionist swaths. They hum as they reach for one another with outstretched roots beneath the Earth. In a crescendo, blankets of pines stretch for God. Holy rainwater spirits their growth. This concerto they embody wholly. I began, prior to my […]
Read more
When I was fifteen, I bought a book about Camille Claudel from Everything’s-a-Dollar. With tax, it actually cost $1.96, which seemed like false advertising. Books from that store were always a risk, but I was always willing to take risks on books. This one paid off. I became obsessed. Obsessed with Camille’s exhausted and knowing […]
Read more
“Despite what he had written in his letter, Noel’s separation from his family would always be geographical. He spent the remainder of his wealthy life dining alone.” The back cover folded over the final page and turned the work into a solid, white brick. An item for production. A large wet stamp was stomped on […]
Read more
After the Lunar New Year, I take the plane from Beijing to New York City to Phoenix, where the gingery dialect of cordialities is sloughed, like chili pepper, from my tongue. Here in the stretch of uncharted Arizona canyon, there is an astounding dust-filled silence: wind whistling across undulating tiers of limestone, and the soft […]
Read more
Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian award-winning author of ten books. Her book, Walks in Shanghai, received the Ibn Battuta Prize for travel literature 2021; her novel, Emerald Mountain, received the award of the best Arabic novel in 2014 from Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF). In 2009, she was selected for the Beirut39 as one of […]
Read more
Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Rajeh At first, they appeared timid. They wore black, walked slowly, and gazed at everything around them, as if measuring the air with their eyes. We only took note of them after they started moving in groups of five or more. With the same calm, the same intent look, […]
Read more
I got on a steamboat run by a whistling mouse in a navy gray hat and overalls. No gloves. His name escapes me. Apparently, it’s under trademark. He’s still under trademark. Not copyright. Or, at least, his likeness with the red pants and white gloves and mustard yellow shoes is under trademark. So. No. Gloves. […]
Read more
I made a cake. It looked beautiful. Not one of those overly neat, complicated fondant things that used to be in vogue; instead, a tastefully askew cake with real flowers stuck onto it. Wabisabi. I suppose I could have just eaten it myself and refused to share it. But, sharing is caring! Up it went, […]
Read more
You are a grown-up, so you fill your new bathtub with Legos and Coca Cola and go to your kitchen—which is also the bedroom and the living room and the hallway—and fetch the bowl of cookie dough. You sit in your stew of sugar and plastic and wolf down the dough in fistfuls. You let […]
Read more
Once upon a time there was a great and powerful king. When he first assumed control of the kingdom, after his father the previous king passed away, life for the people wasn’t so good. They went hungry most of the time, food and clean water were scarce, and nice houses only existed in dreams. The king’s subjects were […]
Read more
I live in a temple, and you live in a house. When you visit me, you run slender fingers across my shrine. I don’t know how to respond to this. I’ve been alone for three hundred years and I’m dusty and small. I want to ask you to stop kissing my feet but the words […]
Read more
IMAGE NO. 1+2 + MONOLOGUE NO. 1+2: Alt Text: My first lesbian experience was with the sun. My eye stared at it for a whole minute—a hole was bored into my eyesight. There was no solar eclipse or anything—no reason to stare. Nobody there. Two dusts: fairy dust and black salt. Black salt for cleansing. […]
Read more
IMAGE NO. 1: Alt Text: Picture of the beach. At the top center of the image is an airplane that is about to land at the airport. Directly under it is a black sun that is rising over some hilly islands that block the view into the open ocean. At the bottom of the image […]
Read more
It starts with crickets. We lie in the forest and she sings about colors. Silver and purple at twilight, rubies of emerald glowing. There is nothing to back her voice, only crickets. The words echo and the moon fills up her lungs. Sunlight comes in shafts during the day, she reminds us as we watch […]
Read more
9 February, 2017 I’m trying to be normal but it’s hard. I’m scared of all the psychiatrists. I write this and stop, my pen hovering over my journal. I don’t know what I’m feeling and I don’t want to excavate, like I had been. I leaf through the previous pages, more than thirty of them […]
Read more
A girl, let’s call her Fashion, invited me over to meet her hamster. The hamster lived in a large clear plastic box, like a large storage container, but it had no top. At first, this startled me. Where was the top? Then I remembered hamsters couldn’t fly. This hamster lived in its plastic house without […]
Read more
I. When your ex-boyfriend asks you to bake his wedding cake, say yes. It’s not about the money, although he will offer you a heaping mound of cash. He will spot you through the frosted storefront windows. Don’t make eye contact until you hear the door open. Pretend not to see him even though he […]
Read more
Content warning: violence, self-harm Honey said holding onto memory is like trying to grasp water with spread fingers. She told me to hold on to the sweet ones, to turn my mind into cupped palms before they leak from the gaps of my fingers. If you remember anything, remember this: hold on, hold on, she’d […]
Read more
I’m in a race with my lungs. Well, not so much with them as against them. They haven’t been very accommodating lately. And for full transparency, they’re not really my lungs, I’m just using them to the best of my abilities. They belonged to someone else once, someone who, I heard unofficially, didn’t survive a […]
Read more
Even after Phoebe returned from the funeral, she couldn’t bring herself to make any more half-hearted attempts at getting something on the canvas. The shades were never bright enough, the lines looked stiff and lifeless. Phoebe had tried different tools, different mediums, different canvas sizes. Nothing worked anymore. She decided to distract herself before bed, […]
Read more
The blow-up castle blooms like a ghost in their backyard. It’s bubble gum pink. Mara’s boyfriend can’t see it, gives her a look like not now, please when she points out the kitchen window. His mother is here for Christmas. They’ve removed certain books from their shelves, have taken down Mara’s paintings of naked women […]
Read more
When Carla woke between them on Saturday as a small fish, flopping and gasping under the duvet, they decided to put her in the bathtub while they figured out how to get her back. They argued for a while over what temperature the water should be. Lorna said cold and Alex said lukewarm. Actually no, […]
Read more
Art “Pillar of Perspective” by Paris Jessie (Issue 80) Peach Hell by Jacelyn Yap (Issue 84) this is me trying by Yuyang Zhang (Issue 74) CNF How to Make Chicken Hekka by Jessica Bakar (Issue 82) (Up)Rising by Denise R. Ervin (Issue 80) Fiction “The Botanist, the Dwarf Peach Tree, and the Marigold Flower” by Brooke Henzell (Issue 82) “Sprout” by Morgan […]
Read more
Undertaker was certain he had a quarter somewhere. But even if he managed to find the dull, ridged coin, he was unsure whether it was appropriate to tip the bag boy who ceremoniously carried groceries to Undertaker’s Scream-Mobile. In this particular case, the young man’s head was not even visible over the towering stack of […]
Read more
In a modern-day miracle, one of my friends fell out of a tree and missed the ground, swooping up into the sky like a kite cut free of its strings. One of my friends tweeted oh my god oomf fell out of a tree but before she hit send, she got distracted by a TikTok […]
Read more
The goddess of love sat in the row in front of me, two seats to my right, during the first lecture of Classical Mythology in Art and Literature. I don’t hyperbolize or lie; it was really her. She asked to be called V, which may have fooled the rest of them, but not me. It […]
Read more
The summer before she met Ben, Gwen had a bad sexual experience. It hadn’t quite been rape, she didn’t think. He just hadn’t been very well-behaved. She didn’t relay the bad behaviour to friends. To them he was just the entomologist who kissed like a fish. To them it was funny. She had nightmares about […]
Read more
He is a biology or criminal justice major. I don’t know if he thinks about me outside of class. He writes fiction that destroys me. “I really like your assignments,” he says to me the fourth class of the semester. “Thank you,” I say, cordially. “The semester has only just started.” He is 18, and […]
Read more
Creation story #1: God makes a woman out of honey, dripping-sweet, wet and sticking and oozing grace, his hands warming it as he shapes and then she is there, the sun behind her making her glow, molten. She is sweet, she melts by noon. God leaves her in the garden and upon returning she is […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
The Most Beautiful Things Could End Us by Zach Murphy a grocery list by Kelly Stohr Stonescript by Ryan Tan
Read more
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
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
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 […]
Read more
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? […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
VAGABOND CITY 