Issue 78 – VAGABOND CITY

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 78, Prose, vagabond city

The Unplastering by Lili Louzhi

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 […]

Everything, Fiction, Issue 78, Prose, vagabond city

Stitches Showing by Jenna Lasby

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 […]

Art, Everything, Issue 78, Reviews + Interviews

a whole big world of art: a farewell

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 […]

Everything, Fiction, Issue 78

VC’s Best Microfiction Nominees

The Most Beautiful Things Could End Us by Zach Murphy a grocery list by Kelly Stohr Stonescript by Ryan Tan

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 […]

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 […]

Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

on being a scientist by Nivanthika Wimalasena

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 […]

Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

I’m Back at Urgent Care in Overalls Again by Rhienna Renée Guedry

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]