in this poem, you don’t hurl my body against gravel as my memories of you bleed into grief. my blood staining the stones your favorite color: my hurt. in this poem, i scream and someone hears. when i’m released from your grip, your fingers don’t leave imprints on my body. in this poem, there is no reminder of the […]
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There’s no AC and there’s a heatwave in Seattle. Experts say it’s the hottest, sweetest day on record. We’re two creatures drunk on THC, held by the floor, sung to by the wings of plastic fans. We take turns wiping sweat off each other’s temples. The earth is dying. I love passing away with you. […]
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Nicole Flaherty Kimball (she/her) is an emerging Jewish poet and artist from SLC, UT. A several-time Best of the Net Nominee, her pieces are published or forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Radar Poetry, Sunspot Lit, Mom Egg Review, and elsewhere. Nicole is a Creative Writing student at Southern New Hampshire University.
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which is categorically the best kindof end poem. Not by choice; by absenceof leaving. This year, we learned aboutdetritus, Tik Tok algorithms, how to tracethe leavings-behind of extra ordinarycreatures. Our oldest cat, oncea neighborhood apex predator, hashad her butthole shaved for hygienic.Let the new year grant us all some kindof discretion. Last night, I followeda […]
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Jillian Clasky is a writer from Toronto. She currently lives in Ottawa, where she is pursuing a BA in English and creative writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as Claw & Blossom and Polyphony Lit, and she was commended in the 2022 Adroit Prizes. She serves as Managing Editor of Common House, the University of […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators This Conversation Is Being Recorded by Hannah Kezema Hannah Kezema’s hybrid debut, This Conversation Is Being Recorded, is a vibrant collection of poems and erasures of painted, dirtied, and flora-filled legal documents and interview notes from her experiences as an investigator and editor in the insurance […]
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Nothing makes a work of art more welcoming to me than a warning label. Like the parental advisories on CDs when I was growing up, warning labels still offer a childlike thrill but also come from a place of mindfulness. Starting off with a subject matter warning, one author’s statement, a publisher’s disclaimer, and a […]
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Game Over Books is open for full-length poetry, chapbook, and hybrid submissions. Manuscripts should be in Times New Roman, size 12 font, include a title page and a table of contents, your name, genre, and page count on the title page, and an acknowledgments page, if applicable. Individual poems/stories may be previously published, but the […]
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The day I promised to love you forever, I’d spent my morning tending to a patient awaiting a heart transplant. His heart was failing, the left ventricle weak, baggy, sagging like the overstretched neck of a favorite old T-shirt, no longer able to contract enough to push adequate blood to organs and extremities. A colleague […]
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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 […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Black Avatar and Other Essays by Amit Majmudar Black Avatar and Other Essays is the first nonfiction collection by internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, and translator Amit Majmudar. Combining elements of memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, the eight pieces in this deeply engaging volume reflect the […]
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with Images & Phrases from Shakespeare’s sonnets for C.M. Nathan Erwin is a land-based poet who was raised on the Allegheny Plateau, the northernmost tier of Appalachia. An IAF and Harvard-trained organizer, Erwin currently operates at Boston Medical Center to prevent overdose deaths and at the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust building healthy futures for farmers and […]
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The cedar chest lives in the living room. I am six, cracking its polished skull open to the lightasking Mom why it smells so funny— Cedar protects the delicates like fabrics and old papers from being eaten by moths keeps everything dry from mold, fungus, oils, fumes. You know this part in the story. She doesn’t come back. A […]
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it’s wild that some homophobes think queerness emerges from a lack a victim chalk outline where some better dad should be where pavement collects and america is a freedom ambulance stuck in freedom traffic bald eagle tears rotten apple in this scenario only one can live a broken […]
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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 […]
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Lucy Liu is a grade 9th high school student at the Academy of the Canyons located in Valencia, CA. They started to learn drawing at age five and enjoy drawing to express their feelings and thoughts.
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West Branch is currently looking for a remote Associate Poetry Editor and Associate Fiction Editor. For the Associate Poetry Editor (compensation: $4000/year) position, applicants should have experience working with literary journals, an MFA in poetry, a strong publication record, and no more than one published book. For the Associate Fiction Editor (compensation: $4000/year) position, applicants […]
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Chicken Hekka is a dish originating from the plantation era. It is a Hawaiian version of Japanese sukiyaki and is still popular today. Cook time: 5 generations and approximately 45 minutes Ingredients: 1. Boneless chicken breast 2. Dried Shiitake mushrooms 3. White planter elite to oust Queen Lili’uokalani 4. Canned straw mushroom 5. Long rice […]
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Translated from the Kurdish by Kareem Abdulrahman Archipelago Books Release date: January 24, 2023 direct quotations from the text appear as highlighted italics During a war, people are always broken. Sometimes the fragments find one another, and with enough heat even the smallest pieces of sand can be turned into glass, but finding one another isn’t […]
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You are ghost to me, caught in the rectangleOf progress, the YouTubification of socialInteraction, fitting for a boy (a man) withoutTheory of mind. Numbed to commands of tooMany metal mothers, you become request-makingMachine; I, your playlist, the half hour between startStop. Repeated as if start was Center and center|Everything. Same songs sung into the wishingWeal […]
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Nathan Erwin is a land-based poet who was raised on the Allegheny Plateau, the northernmost tier of Appalachia. An IAF and Harvard-trained organizer, Erwin currently operates at Boston Medical Center to prevent overdose deaths and at the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust building healthy futures for farmers and land stewards. His writing has most recently appeared in Ninth […]
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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 […]
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beloved(s)! plz clink ur glasses w/ me! today is my 25th birthday. today is always my last birthday. today is X-mas. today is Yom Kippur. today is Columbus Day. today is a day of celebration. how else to consider life w/o joy? no. ur probs right: the big dipper is scoopin all the stars 2nite […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Common Life by Stéphane Bouquet (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 increasingly threatened […]
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Cipher Press is looking for book-length adult fiction and creative non-fiction submissions from both agented and unagented authors who identify as LGBTQI+. Send all submissions to both jack [at] cipherpress.co.uk and ellis [at] cipherpress.co.uk with the subject line Submission: fiction, Submission: non-fiction, or Submission: poetry. Deadline: March 31st A Public Space Writing Fellowships is open for […]
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What does space travel look like from a human perspective? Not: marvel at the technological achievements of humanity, but: what are the day-to-day, boots-on-the-zero-gravity lives of people in space? What new problems arise, and how much of the same old complaints about how bad the coffee at work is will follow us beyond the asteroid […]
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Tears and sadness feared, Tried to veer, but we need to steer, Still in steering the sadness leers, Sometimes it’s difficult to face sadness, but drawing and reflecting on the puddles muddles the uncertainty, Something which words can’t fully explain and others cant see, This is my drawing, my expressions of this feeling, Though many […]
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Dinosaur egg rocks, clefts and declivities. Virga daubs sky over mesa achingly. Acid-green lichen. I long to be the sun’s last rake through your hair. Candace Walsh is a queer, multi-genre writer in her fourth year as a PhD student in creative writing (fiction) at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren […]
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and polar bears are dyingon my laptop screen.Black ducks floating backwards, a back-bending sun, the see-sawing skyits bed. My iPhone tells me sunflowers face each otherwhen they can’t spot the sun. I’m eating peaches and living by the riverin my head; sparrows are hopping onto branches with last leaves. How much has changed with weather,much has changed and withered. I’m wearing […]
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in dreams a wherea hole should be a bodypregnant with ache, withwords don’t meanyou, what is whoand where to find, fixthe shimmer wind lickedprismatic, amphibious lung-tied but fervent for gills, waterbound but wingedthe […]
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We made Arrested Development-esque chicken imitationsat the restaurant– bakawk, cheep-cheep, wakka wakka– being young, I thought that was the language of love.We always laughed across the chasm of the room when we shut shop, squeezing soap rags into heart buckets,wiping fresh clear streaks on mahogany tables. I vacuumed pita crumbs and invisible dust, emptied bags […]
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Brianna Cunliffe is an environmental justice activist and storyteller. As a queer woman who grew up on a disintegrating Carolina coastline, her work explores fiercely loving the fragile places we call home. Her poems and short stories have been published in Reckoning Magazine, Bell Press, Lucent Dreaming, Storm Cellar, Claw and Blossom, Blind Corner, and […]
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Trichophagia / but they never called it that / just a bad habit / just a phase / just / she’s a kid / but in flashbulb, hindsight imagination I think / someone probably should have cared / a little more / that I was eating my own hair / gnawing on the ends like […]
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On February 13th, 2019, the rover named “Opportunity” went offline after fifteen years of exploring Mars. In goodbye, a final transmission was sent: Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” In the aftermath of a dust stormyour grey body stilled with all the grace of a dogthat dozes inside only the red ghosts […]
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after Sreshtha Sen in another life, my hand grips my belly, my other hand an extension of my cell phone, lights flashing in my pupils. nine months will be preserved in my phone’s gallery, waiting to be posted in a carousel. five years pass by and i smile at my daughter circling on a metal horse, bobbing to calliope songs, my camera too […]
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Paris Jessie (they/she) is a black, budding creator and wanderer. Much of their work is rooted in the peculiar. You may find more at iamparisjessie.com.
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In the city that birthed rebellion in the decade before my mother birthed me, I have built a home out of ruins. This city that burned itself and then rose from its own ashes has been my guide, showing me the way through the flame ignited by my own personal book of matches. This city, […]
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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 […]
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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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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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VAGABOND CITY 