Everything, Issue 87, Poetry

Lines by Katie Cameron

The new mask doesn’t squeeze, scrunch my ears.End of day, indentations where it pressed against my facein the staff bathroom mirrorlike marks around my eyes after swimming, unclamping my goggles, lines—here, my skin said yes, here no.  I am jealous of the way my body asserts legibly. Wish it could etch how I feel                about returning to the pool,           starting […]

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Everything, Issue 87, Poetry

I love this TikTok Era by Claire Rychlewski

awe-struck at our smoothbrained lexiconspeaking in diluted idioms (esperanto is giving failure)which is beautiful in this Dark Age apocalyptic way, we’ll soon begiving monk, we’ll be monkbossing intothe sun, and she is just          like me          for realour very own Hands Across the World are people still playing songs backwardslistening for secret messages? i feel hot and gauzylike i’ve been set […]

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Everything, Issue 87, Poetry

The Future Holds Us at Gunpoint by Jen Gayda Gupta

after the Highland Park Shooting on July 4th I feel safenowhere at all.Not in my tiny tin home. Not driving through town–bleached storefronts, red caps,flags waving blue lives ahead. Not hiking through the forest,camouflaged a target,deer lurking, hunters licensedand hungry for a kill. They claim the fear of bulletsis a fear of the humanwho commands […]

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Everything, Issue 87, Poetry

Coney Island by Soje

Soje is a poet and the translator of Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla (Tilted Axis Press, 2020), Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (Honford Star, 2021), and Lee Soho’s Catcalling (Open Letter Books, 2021). They also make chogwa, a multimedia zine that features one Korean poem and multiple English translations per issue.

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Everything, Issue 87, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Black Joy Unbound: An Anthology Inspired by a deep longing for writing that embodies the vivacity of Blackness and Black life, Black Joy Unbound is a multi-genre collection that encompasses a broad spectrum of literary writing on Black joy. Maps You Can’t Make by Mariella Saavedra […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 87, Prose, vagabond city

Inflatable by Meg Cass

The blow-up castle blooms like a ghost in their backyard. It’s bubble gum pink. Mara’s boyfriend can’t see it, gives her a look like not now, please when she points out the kitchen window. His mother is here for Christmas. They’ve removed certain books from their shelves, have taken down Mara’s paintings of naked women […]

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Art, Everything, Issue 87

“Cynicism” and “Celestial Violet” by Allison Liu

Allison Liu (she/her) is a queer Chinese American photographer and writer currently studying in the Boston area. She can often be found working on her novel, reading speculative fiction, and conducting bioengineering research. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Yellow Arrow Vignette, The Violet Hour Magazine, The Foredge Review, Crashtest Magazine, Cloudy […]

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Everything, issue 86, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators As If She Had a Say by Jennifer Fliss Who has a right to tell us how to experience our grief? How to perform—or not perform—the roles society prescribes to us based on our various points of identity? As If She Had a Say, the second story […]

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Everything, issue 86, review

In Review: When Ilium Burns by Tiffany Troy

While reading Tiffany Troy’s When Ilium Burns the line “brain to dissociate, / and to upgrade itself into running faster and harder” jumped off the page for aren’t we all in a semi-constant state of dissociation? Multitasking at breakneck speed, instant messaging and downloads, always becoming more efficient and readily accessible. Within this constant state […]

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Everything, issue 86, Poetry

I talk to Tiktik Maria Labo after joining TikTok’s “POV: you stopped dressing for the male gaze” trend by Zoe Dorado

The Visayan urban myth of Maria Labo goes like this: In another country, an Overseas Filipina Worker (OFW) is gang-raped by a group of men. She survives by turning into the flying half-woman-half-demon, Tiktik. Newly transformed, she rides the sea to return home…only to consume her children, get hacked in the face by her husband, […]

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Everything, issue 86, Poetry

Apart by Nazifa Islam

a found poem: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath I have long wanted someone to think aboutwhen sleep will not come and exposed time—born to takewhat it can—scratches me so I crack open with sorrow. But I—with my rottingdepressed mind with all my tortured experience of the world—have no one. I am different from other […]

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Art, Everything, issue 86

stsebast by Jaden Kristoffersson

Jaden Kristoffersson is a trans gay artist working since high school who’s really pretty melancholy, and wants to give other trans people hope and love and a bit of escapism through art that makes you feel something. Working in mixed media and digital. @splatbones

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Everything, Fiction, issue 86, Prose

Something Fishy by Charlie Wührer

When Carla woke between them on Saturday as a small fish, flopping and gasping under the duvet, they decided to put her in the bathtub while they figured out how to get her back. They argued for a while over what temperature the water should be. Lorna said cold and Alex said lukewarm.  Actually no, […]

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Everything, Issue 85, Poetry

NIGHTHAWK by Lee Varon

Some pictures in my bird book(c. 1949) are missing. You’ve been missingfor a long time. Even when you were here you were missing.  I bring back no words from my sighting of you at nightstumbling down 72nd street. In my book, the nighthawk is missing.The nighthawk is constantly in the air. Flyingin a zig-zag path. You, sleepless […]

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Everything, Issue 85, Poetry

Smokestacks by Luis Torres

I I look out the window and seemyself looking out,the mountains blue in the rain, my profilea cliff under the lamp’ssilver arch, and there’smy forehead,a landscape burned by the moon.  II Saturday’s wine tastesof last year’s forest fires.My footsteps go sideways,I hit the hallway mirror andrun into myself on theother side. He adjuststhe frame, exits […]

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Everything, Issue 85, Poetry

Chrysalis by Mason Stewart

Churning sea of goop,The broth that is left of my body. Primordial soup            That I will emerge from againThe way I decomposed long ago. Vulnerable,             Even inside the walls I constructed.             Walls that protect me,            Walls that may be my doom.  I lay in wait,Waiting for the door to open,The threshold that I cannot cross,          Yet. Learning […]

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Everything, Issue 85, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2023

Teeter by Kimberly Alidio Comprised of three long poems, Teeter knows experimental forms can be as intimate as mothering; knows we can understand languages we do not speak. From “Hearing”s intensities of attention, to “Ambient Mom”’s familial Filipino immigrant soundscapes, to “Histories”s careful scrutiny of the socially-sanctioned narratives and trajectories to which we are meant […]

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Art, Everything, Issue 85

Art by SAPPHIC SCENES

SAPPHIC SCENES (she/her) is a 27 y/o multidisciplinary lesbian artist originally from the Southern US and now living in China. She is inspired by queer love and liberation, and identifies as a long-time sapphic and late-in-life out lesbian. In addition to the visual arts, she is an avid language learner, reader, and writer, also making […]

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Everything, Issue 84, Opportunities for Artists & Writers, vagabond city

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | June 2023

Epiphany Lit is currently open for art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions for their Fall/Winter 2023 issue. For poetry submissions, submit up to five poems in 12-point font. For prose submissions, submit one piece at a time, double-spaced, in 12-point font. For all submissions: only previously unpublished work considered, all work considered for online publication, […]

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Everything, Issue 84, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: June 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Sex With My Family by Jessica Anne Musings on infertility, cows, longing & freedom by an anemic woman in the winter of her 41st year. Glass Essays by J. A. Bernstein Glass Essays juxtapose the miracles of parenting and birth with the mysteries of death and […]

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Everything, Issue 84, Poetry, vagabond city

who would you even be then by Jill Khoury

although the morning glory flashes its pink striationsalthough the sweetness of spiced cream in the morning cupalthough the lone gull creaking in the copsealthough garden lanterns spin like paper satellitesalthough you laugh when you drop lettuce in your lapalthough one crow alights on the jetty and then anotheralthough your palm presses carrots into velvet muzzlealthough […]

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Art, Everything, Issue 84, vagabond city

Art by Jacelyn Yap

From Jacelyn: Peach Hell (4 pieces) is a little series I drew during the height of COVID-19, having graduated from university feeling isolated and confused. The soap I used obsessively throughout that period was peach scented, and I’ve come to associate it with the hellish feelings from that time. Peach Hell Jacelyn recently started her […]

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Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

poem in which you can’t hurt me by Annalisa Hansford

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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Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

THIS IS AN END OF THE YEAR POEM by Lucas Peel

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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Everything, Issue 83, Poetry, vagabond city

Fracture by Jillian Clasky

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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Everything, Issue 83, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: May 2023

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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Everything, Issue 82, Now Read This

Now Read This: April 2023

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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Everything, Issue 82, Poetry

overdose deaths of five children by Nathan Erwin

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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Everything, Issue 82, Poetry

For Passing Down to Daughters by Emily J. Mundy

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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Everything, Issue 82, Poetry

Normal Country by Jeremiah Moriarty

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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