For this month’s issue I interviewed Vicky Liang, an illustrator/artist currently based in New Jersey. Saccharine, round, and able to make one’s cheeks blush, Vicky’s illustrations capture innocent vision through singular pieces and small-page comics. Taking homage from her inspirations in children’s book illustration and Studio Ghibli media, Vicky incorporates elements such as anthropomorphic animals, […]
Read more
Dear Mummiji by Bhumika Muchhala
Dear Mummiji, Your ink black hair parted in the middle like an open book of mysteries. Your marble-sized red bindi resting above your third eye, giving way to your fading brows the same haphazard shape as mine. Your diamond nose ring, glinting mischievously in the dusty morning light of Mumbai. Your puckered lips, one darker […]
Read more
MERYL D’SA interviews ALEXANDRA DUMITRICӐ
Where you are from? What are your passions and hobbies? My full name is Alexandra Cristina Dumitrică. I was born in Bucharest, Romania, during a rainy November night almost 21 years ago. Today, I still live in Bucharest, where I study Pharmacy at University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila.” Even though the career path I […]
Read more
FEAR: A COLLAGE by RONNY FORD
If I could smoke fear away I’d roll that motherfucker up. -Kendrick Lamar More than a year and a half after my last sip of alcohol, I still get nightmares about drinking again. And they are nightmares, despite the scene being only in my little kitchen, me standing at the sink, swirling my icy glass […]
Read more
LOSERS AND THIEVES by LEYTON CASSIDY
I am a Sarah Lawrence girl who loves Sarah Lawrence girls. Many of us do– we love to love each other. Staring over sociology books, all of us in love with whoever we find looking back. We keep secrets under a cherry blossom tree that’s no longer there. We huddle under the sculpture rumored to […]
Read more
TAILSPIN by DARWIN PAPPAS-FERNANDES
a leaf caught between two fingers snatch back the words, unchosen, opting instead for some that won’t place my heart between your palms. I dandelion-wish the next phrase can transplant the muscle from where it’s lived so long on my bloodied sleeve, press it back into my chest where it belongs even though I know […]
Read more
BLUE EYES/GREEN EYES/BROWN EYES by TIFFANY MOTON
my discount full-size mattress has traditionally been known to comfortably accommodate a maximum party of 2—maybe— on a cool night when the hot air trapped between my legs and the old duvet isn’t so severe as to de-wrinkle the sheets but this night, we bunked our bodies, stacked like buttered toast on a diner plate […]
Read more
LETTER TO THE SKY by ALISON HICKS
Across our bowl deep as our atmosphere, you provide friction for those attempting re-entry. Clouds are garments you put on and discard. You layer them up and peel them off. When you fling them they scoop us up and hurl down on us. I saw your bare chest once on a late summer evening in […]
Read more
HOLLOWING OUT by ANOUSHKA SUBBAIAH
it is a bright orange sunday and my fists are unripening and i am still contemplating that baby albino turtle born with a wide open heart – so tender and exposed, a small pulsing blackberry abandoned by his own shell. i try to cup his breaths like running water with my two inconsolable hands; each […]
Read more
ON BEING READ MY MIRANDA RIGHTS IN MY OWN HALLWAY by L. R. Bird
i think often of what i am worth in bounties— what would you trade for my teeth back, cleaned? what would you borrow to bring me home? what would even be home enough for me and another person to both know it? i am laughed out of my own voice when i am worried i […]
Read more
SELF PORTRAIT AS A FRANK OCEAN SONG ABOUT DRUGS by KB Brookins
Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancin’ with Gina’s pink-budded tongueuntil she lets out a moan almost loud enough for someone to hear.I’ve been a connoisseur of un-out women; now that I think about itthe ones with daddy issues, unstable self-images, and bluntsdipped in promethazine. We smoke gas in the back of Julian’s pickupand you […]
Read more
MYTHOS by STEPHANIE VALENTE
tuesday nights: fold tiny paper birds smudged white ignore phone numbers i’ll never text tie off lovers like old stories with a string i’ll crown myself jeweled with flowers hide my face cross out the name of you like a to-do list make vows for tomorrow, to growl alone. Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, […]
Read more
WHITE PICKET FENCES by PRITHIVA SHARMA
You told me you had your first kiss at Papa Chinos by the bushes I was awestruck that a Papa Chinos exists where they have bushes I wonder what kind of a neighbourhood you grew up in Was it a brownstone one, with houses lined one after the other or was it a scene […]
Read more
BIRTHRIGHT by NATALIE WEE
Of all my inheritances my father’s appetite pulls heaviest the translucent ache licks my joints sweet a mouth without a mouth begging not for fullness but to be rid of absence a man who praises water’s return to shore transforms my […]
Read more
MERYL D’SA interviews LIDIA TOMASHEVSKAYA
Where are you from? What kind of work do you do? I am from Saint-Petersburg Russia, but live in Israel now. I work as an illustrator and graphic designer. When did you begin illustrating? Could you tell us what your process is? I began illustrating about 6 years ago, after finding a modern illustration catalog […]
Read more
SNOW by RACHEL EGLY
She lies back on the bed while he watches the snow outside settling softly like the skin in the curve of her back. With the curtains and his attention drawn back inside, the soft machine of his body reminds her of the streets after the plow comes through. She sighs and thinks a mouth is […]
Read more
PARTING POEM by KIT ARMSTRONG
After Brad Paisley, “Ticks” Every atmosphere you bottle to your lips was the other half of an idea. Let’s get out of drive, find a moonlight, kiss a path I used to […]
Read more
KELLY DRIVE by KHALIAH PITTS
molten time // or perhaps memories, wet with windings and wanderings, wondering and the wariness and weariness the waxed (and waned) songs the many psalms sung and hung from expectant arms beings of ground pulled from homes soused with the whispers of living ghosts i came to give offerings at the place where trees come […]
Read more
YOLK by CRIS IACOPONI
I would bang the egg of my forehead against bathroom walls Sunday mornings. ✝ My parents would drop me at Amy’s then over coffee cake and orange juice they’d whisper “We sure do love her, but—” I had a dream last night Amy. We were holding hands walking by the side of Route 55 […]
Read more
NATALIE KORMAN’S DAY OFF by NATALIE KORMAN
In this treatment, I am Cameron Frye and my old man, that’s me too, I am the interminable clang against my skull, making a charmed life a nightmare, making an exquisite home a hellhole. I am trying to evade consequences of freedom. It is so dirty and so frightening, I recoil. Freedom dings and puts […]
Read more
FABRIC WOUND AND UNWOUND, by TASNEEM MAHER
Sometimes I wish there was some kind of unit with which to measure change. At one point, I tried to measure change in habits – in the things that carved my days into shape, in the catchphrases I used, and so on. This method worked for about a week until I realised that it didn’t […]
Read more
MERYL D’SA interviews VIŠNJA MIHATOV BARIĆ
Tell us about yourself and the kind of artwork you do. My name is Višnja Mihatov Barić, I was born in Zadar but I live and work now in the capital city of Croatia, Zagreb. I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and after that I worked as a graphic designer for […]
Read more
MATRYOSHKA by JEFFREY ZOU
She tells me how in Russian, Nesting dolls are like onions, layers unraveled To reveal more layers Slowly Slowly Her mother whips the shaft of a cane on the dance studio, Splintering […]
Read more
POET: DATER BEWARE by SHELBY HINTE
They say insanity is defined by doing the same thing and expecting different results. An ex once left this line in my voicemail box. This was back when we still referred to them as mailboxes. Most of my first boyfriends were poets because, well, I was also a poet. To be honest, I don’t think […]
Read more
GASLIGHT by CHRISTIAN J. COLLIER
I wrote about the assault a year after it happened once, converted reality into a short fiction piece for a class in college & a week later, my professor, in her critique, told me that the way I’d described the act was not plausible, that it could not occur in the manner in which I […]
Read more
AMERICAN ROT by DANIEL TOBIN
When I’m with you I feel clean mother-made-your-room-clean I am a 50’s diner clean I want to throw everything out my window the bed, my speakers, books, high def televisions, to choke on the empty with you naked and crosslegged […]
Read more
REVOLUTIONARY LOVE by OLEANDER VENZON
have you ever noticed that the moment before we kiss is made up of the tension before a riot? air filled with both nothingness and hope molotov lips hot and unholy and burning for attention; together we make a lit match– a real fuckin faggot– together, we burn western civilization to the ground // i […]
Read more
JAZZ by SARA MATSON
long dark body wave hidden under regal mythical blood + sex /// i am a love child of punky teenage dragons + fucking serious art over the moon i wait besting key rings between knuckles / obsessive fantasy gibbous / cackling blonde wigs curled like a weapon cautiously interrupted by a charming romance […]
Read more
VAMPIRE by MAYA MALDONADO
i got called a “sexual vampire” once and i think he meant it as a compliment. he doesn’t know i am the worst kind of vampire the real kind, the bone kind, the steely fanged kind, doesn’t know i have power crackling from the tips of my fingers, doesn’t know i peel my skin off each night […]
Read more
STRAIN by SALLIE FULLERTON
It’s a chain link all the times I told myself to dig in and forced a simpler phrase my muscles are sore and stringent and you ask me what the hell this means it’s a system of grabs and takes eventually you learn to move in tune to smaller steps. A night falls on you like […]
Read more
MAUSOLEUM by JUSTIN KARCHER
there’s this dream I’ve been having: a shiver of supermodels digging through my grandpa’s old stuff and telling me I’m not man enough when I wake up I put on some Kid Cudi and smoke the day away hey Mr. Rager they pump you full of parties then turn you into a constellation of mortgages, […]
Read more
MILLERSVILLE by GABRIELLE MARTIN
There comes a point where every small town in Pennsylvania looks the same but this one is mine: like dirt stains on the side of a row home on the end I am ubiquitous, familiar. My toes catch the dust falling through corners cracks, I am a heifer, staring wide-eyed at the sun (cows will […]
Read more
HONEY by YVES OLADE
i was born at dusk \ & some nights i still live there \ some nights \ it’s my body in the river \ & my hand reaching up to the moon \ keeping the sky together. \ but honey wants fragile, \ wants sweet. \ he wants something with its mouth wide open \ […]
Read more
SIX SLIPS OF PAPER CHANGING HANDS by MCKENNA JUDGE
number one soul-seller, preacher in the language of the flesh don’t take this wrong, but you’d look better with the lights off. eyes where my skin should be, rolling back to the bloodshot whites as you push your fingers into a bruise, or maybe it’s as simple as an excavation, the screaming of all the […]
Read more
BREAKFAST POPSICLES by MAIA KACHAN
It’s monday and I eat two lemon popsicles as a start of the week meal replacement. I calculate the contents in my disordered (eating) brain and you tell me that popsicles aren’t food. When I call you mom and thank you for your concern we laugh in smiling eyes about the way we fucked the […]
Read more
HONEYMOON RANCH by ZOE KURLAND
Here is what’s borrowed: We have all begun to look for something blue. The whole act is old — cowboy hat and borrowed suit, and just because your mother walks you down the aisle it doesn’t mean you’re A good guy. Old time chivalry with a hot tipped iron, welding the other with burn smack, […]
Read more
Bethany Mary on “Crumb-sized” by Marlena Chertock
Marlena Chertock stunned us once before with her poems in “On that one-way trip to Mars,” and now she returns with another astronomical collection, “crumb-sized.” Familiar topics return with new flair and detail, teaching us more about blackbodies and exoplanets, and imparting more awareness on personal issues like dysplasia and queer life. One of her […]
Read more
HOW YOU GUARD YOURSELF LIKE A SECRET by IFEANYI MICHAEL
Shadows belonging to the people that have died inside me form part of the weight I carry around. I carry ghosts of former friends in my pocket. Look closely, I burned my tongue yesterday after spelling rejection on the skins of those I once shared quiet nights with. The life I live is simple: Build […]
Read more
FUCKBOI PHRASES by MARISA ADAME
I remember used. I remember having thumbprints on my thighs // like grease-stains on a cracked screen. I remember being screen // door left unlocked in case he ever wanted to stop by // because he always wanted to come inside. I remember being cracked // dropped on linoleum floor along with a wine bottle & […]
Read more
THE NEEDLE TOLD ME TO BE QUIET by TEDDI HAYNES
Let me soil my fortune on crimson-licked love & your fox face. My prayer opens rehearsed bone, you incise through the marrow & drink it, let the keyhole ritual eat me whole. Not that I like it, I just want to remember what it’s like with your fingers slipping […]
Read more
MY NAME MEANS DOG by CALEB LOVELACE
a study: mid-bloom half-rot, my name has traveled so long to find me. a […]
Read more
ETHER by EMILY YIN
for my grandfather _ Rooftop shingles concatenate across the valley like fractal canopy, like RGB pixels blooming over the dusky night. In one rendering of my memory, Taipei is a city stalled on the threshold of morning, recursive function paused on the nth iteration of the scripting of this city that I love, suspended until […]
Read more
PARALLELS/DEC by ABIGAIL MAY-DEVHANI
december 4, 2016: i am smoking, my lungs are leaking and my breaths are slowing and i may have taken pills but not without liquor / never with liquor. our breaths clash, like death’s cigarettes. it’s a smart kind-of self-harm. or at least that’s what i used to think. decay and destruction begin to rot […]
Read more
HALF RIGHT by FREYJA JONES
When I was fourteen a blonde boy took me into a field and tried to fuck me in a hedge. It wasn’t a a suitable hedge; there were brambles everywhere. They poked at my skin, clawed at me like the boy who clawed his way up my legs. I lay there, semi-exposed in an English […]
Read more
CALENDARS by ELIZABETH THERIOT
Time and its contradictions. Wasted time. Its dreaded passing. How can I use or save it more efficiently? Time preservationist. The soft rotted time of forest floors. Photographs and boxes of mementos. Everything is time-sensitive. I am time sensitive. One night during the first few weeks of my current relationship our watches sat side by […]
Read more
VAGABOND CITY interviews ALYSSA MOORE
Where are you from? Columbus, OH What are your hobbies? I’m usually creating something, photography, dance, and I’m always up for trying something new! What kind of dance have you done? I did Jazz and lyrical in high school and then I choreographed in an organization called Ayo at Cedarville University. When did you start […]
Read more
THE GUIDE TO BEING MEXICAN-AMERICAN FOR DUMMIES by KRYSTAL NAVARRO
i. your american mother will unintentionally white-wash you. when orientation for kindergarten begins, her first instinct will be to put a little ‘x’ in the box marked ‘white’ for your ethnicity because her translucent skin burns in the sun, and she forgets that yours tans. when your father weaves stories of el chupcacabra and la […]
Read more
THE LEVITY OF TRUTH by GRACE
There really is no good time to tell your mother you’ve never liked boys. Closets do not relinquish their grips easily but I have always instinctively hated dresses. So when my mother asked me about boyfriends again as we wrenched the tails from luscious prawns and cracked their shells with our teeth, I offered the […]
Read more
EMILY AS SHE SPENT THE DAY NOT LOOKING AT ME by DARREN C. DEMAREE
I am thawed. Deep in winter, I am warm for Emily & she knows that. The sky stays stark & she knows that as well. I am thawed & I still invite her to walk across me. She prefers the shore most days. I can only be the lake & most of my invitations aren’t […]
Read more
CADENCE by DANIELLE ELEANOR
your name tastes like the ocean in my mouth the highest arch of green smoothed by sun then white foam fizzing out snapping bubbles kiss my ankles you go on for miles if I think about you and nothing else I can taste you whenever I want my lungs s […]
Read more
VAGABOND CITY 