Issue 42 – VAGABOND CITY

FOR D. by QUINN LUI

chicory grows by the roadside, their soft-blunted petals shading blue to purple in mimicry of dawn. i don’t think we ever talked through a sunrise. we came close, maybe, but mostly i remember easing the back door open to stand ankle-deep in melting snow. i remember looking up at wispy pinpricks of starlight, wondering if […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 42

THE CASE FOR NEGLIGENCE by MELISSA MESKU

I only clean the house when I’m about to rent it on Airbnb. When I come back the apartment is still neat, smelling faintly of a stranger. It only takes three days for the apartment to smell like cigarettes again. The luggage will not be unpacked. Occasional pilfering will reduce its contents, but the bag […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

NO POEMS ARE ALLOWED IN SANCTUARIES by JAY DÉLISE

On the doors of a church, where the windows run miles into the sky so high that god herself must reach up to open them a notice reads: no poems. To my religion, I thank you. Under your tutelage You taught me the way to live In spite of what you expected, I admire your […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

COUNT THE MOONS by JASMINE LEDESMA

So we rent a car & drive to the wild of Pennsylvania. Crops tall as biblical women, their heads flinching. Nobody lives here, it seems. Houses but they’re empty, lights but they’re off. We float to our hotel room & polaroid in the mirror. Swimming pool midnight, chlorine-safe. I couldn’t drown if I tried. We […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

FINELY WOVEN by BRITTANY ADAMES

The taste is ritualistic: Peeling off your jacket. Cradling white-fleshed language like distilled liquor parting father’s cracked lips. Sinking a tooth into grime and hoping to consume what pain has not taken from you. Two fingers jabbed in the jam jar — Maybe I will make a home out of this, you say. You cast […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

SUMMER LIKE A GIRL by MYCAH MILLER

After Olivia Gatwood I want to feel summer again like a girl like she is standing right next to me breathing hot breath into my ear she whispers like car rides and smells like sweat and is never still, still anything like when I was fourteen and rode my red bicycle to the ocean every […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

AT THE CHAPEL IN THE DFW AIRPORT by CHLOE N. CLARK

I don’t go in. just noticed it in passing, pacing loops on a layover I am an hour’s flight and three hours of waiting from you I’m not one to imagine my own future, don’t build a life of what ifs, if this then that’s. But a chapel in an airport makes me stop Are […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

EL BAHR, EL BAHR, EL BAHR by LEENA ABOUTALEB

the sea sun-sick, sun-washed, sun-kissed the sea reckless and in love with the sun the sea with a heart of a fig, a pomegranate, a lemon the sea in the ear of the moon, the sea as the mouth of the moon, the sea vanishing into skins, the sea rebirthing skins, the sea as the […]

Issue 42, Poetry, Translation

BIJAN ELAHI translated by REBECCA RUTH GOULD and KAYVAN TAHMASEBIAN

اما که اما که دید سال– با چند بنفشه به دنیا آمد ؟کی که تشنگی. شیرین بود : دورم از یاد نمی‌داری – به هدر رفته جوانیمپوستی شگرف – اما ! چسبیده به تو ، جوانی دیگر این‌جا که بسنده بود . چند بنفشه به پوشاندن دهانه چاه And Who? And who saw the yearwas […]

Art, Everything, Issue 42

Featured Artist: DANIELLE MORGAN

Danielle Morgan sees things most people don’t see, and turns them into art. Danielle lives in Stockholm, but she was born in a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. Her attention to detail brings the light on small, everyday occurrences of beauty : the shape of a hair-tie, arms […]

Everything, Issue 42, Poetry

FRICTION by LAUREN GILMORE

You tell me how, in his Nobel prize speech, William Faulkner said the only thing worth writing is the human heart in conflict with itself. We are underneath the first tree to jump the gun on Autumn. Holding back October like a yawn, we stay in the park until dusk starts apologizing for the day, […]