A mosaic of vibrant magnets covered my family’s off-white refrigerator. My eyes traced the mural from the I ❤ NYC sticker in the top-right corner of the door, down to the Honolulu postcard, and past the handle to family photos in Beijing, evoking memories that felt like fairy tales. As a kid, I believed our […]
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over early coffee, a friend reminds you how young you truly are, howyour head & heart are developing with a rapidness too invisible to praise. it feels so obvious, yet you forget all the time.look, every day you unveil a new shadeof yourself, strange unseen tones bleedingtogether on your palette. lookhow your face has shifted its shape over […]
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7/31: Mud Season is currently accepting 1 to 6 digital images, 3-5 poems, or one piece of prose of up to 6,000 words. Include brief author/creator bio. Must be at least 18 to submit work. 8/5: Parley Lit is currently accepting previously unpublished art (up to 5 pieces), up to 3 poems, prose of up […]
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is the worst possible method of acquiring information.i never like what i learn & i refuse to listen to reporters who dress in colors you won’t find in thewoods: horrible dark greys, blacks, & maroons. seeking answers, i take matters into my own hands: i walk around & ask every animal i see on a scale of 1 […]
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In the final stanzas of “Sanity,” poet Lydia Rae Bush defines her body’s position on the margins via contrast with “the center, / where I cannot stay or even land.” Unlike the poem’s second-person foil, whose position is described as “effortless,” the speaker “create[s] a constellation / with my jagged ebb and flow, // orbiting […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons by Anonymous Inspired by writer and philosopher Audre Lorde’s famous claim: “Poetry is not a luxury,” this anthology proves the vitality of poetry as a crucial source of inspiration, comfort, and delight. In a first section, “Summer,” […]
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Stand in the morgue and listento the hush between last breaths and statistics,where silence weighs heavier than data points,certainty is measured in empty homes and call medicine poison.Let mistrust metastasize like mold in flood-ravaged cities,watch fever slip through cracks in your rhetoric whileruin joins it in drought-cracked soil because disease is the freest thing of […]
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John Swofford’s schizophrenia makes him, according to him, neurodivergent, and he identifies as queer—where queer would mean that his sexuality doesn’t fit any category. This identity influences him as an artist. He was in a L’Exposition show at Times Square (2025) and a L’Exposition exhibit in Montmartre, Paris (2025). He can be found on X/Twitter […]
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everything was fireproof and temperateand the sky was whole and holding waterspace was clean and time was sloweveryone loved and believed in love orbelieved love would come they wonderedthey cried but their tears were waterfor uncooked seedseveryone was truthful and their names werefamiliar and their faces were familiar andtheir bodies were familiar and beautiful andeverything […]
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VAGABOND CITY 