vagabond city

after Jenny Tiskus The first day with the stethoscopethe thought of eyes catchingon my buzzed head and refusingto let me listen to the child’s heartbeatlands like a winch hook behind mysternum, reeling me up and awayfrom the rancid culture simmeringin parental guts before I can evenpress the tiny belly, find the hurt.Years on I am […]

Dingzhong Ding (he/him) is a writer from Shanghai, China. His work has been recognized by the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and Yale Young Writers’ Workshop. You can find him on Instagram @ddzhxng.

All mental collapse happensin the winter. The brief pop of red tree leaves before dropping. That’s it. I was enclosedin my bed  when I marked the distancebetween me and spring. Flashlight under the covers with a mapof my head in my hands. I fell asleep for a long time. A brain is like a spider’s web,shaped for protectionbut by […]

metaphysics celebrity worship when to arrive at a party fashion trends the point of gambling dark matter how to look a stranger in the eye who decides when a war is over and who decides it’s begun in the first place how to take an outfit from day to night and what is the point […]

Michael Russell (he/they) is coauthor of chapbook Split Jawed with Elena Bentley (forthcoming from Collusion Books) and mother monster to chapbook Grindr Opera (Frog Hollow Press). They are queer, mad, and overflowing with anxiety. Currently, he has a craving for chocolate chip pancakes with bananas and thinks you’re fantabulous. Insta: @michael.russell.poet Michael’s previous piece: sadcore […]

leeks,bulbs lit of pencils,of expulsion,space between shared space ;commonality,cataract a similar sounding moan,cascade from  precipice|picked up a hair tie on a hiking trail the other day,burst thereafter,then morning;trillium & sumac–we ’re less animal than we expect,tapetum lucidum,mammalia of the mirror| amatoxin in amanita verna;aversion of blood type O to all else:lover stay back,i don’t know […]

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cottagecore straight edge punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook everyone’s left the hometown show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Impossible Archetype and Emerald City, among several others. They […]

In the greasy morning mirrors I barely even acknowledge myself And I can’t remember how to sing Songs I used to know by heart Surely what’s wrong with me is not The same as what’s wrong with you Surely I comprise a special case When I pace the apartment I know I’m practicing for future […]

For some people I suppose distraction is a respiteFrom life’s hundred million enigmas they daily fight- Or-flight or, finally, try to crackThe codes to. And, sure, I feel that. But for me it’s the reason I first felt self-hate so hardI saw a window not as a thousand painful shards But as a way out—I […]

After Alexandrine Ogundimu I had to scrap my memoirbecause too much of ithad to be redacted. I could talk about thestupid Doc Martens I woreto my retail job every daywithout a cease and desist, but to talk about what myfather said to my motherwould put me against a wall. My father would tie a silk […]

About what’s past, Hold on when you can, I used to say,And when you can’t, let go,let the wind blow through your heart. Like a leaf clings to the tree,I lived, in those days, at the forest’s edge–You must keep what you’ve promisedvery close to your heart, that way you’ll never forgetis what I’ve always […]

Valerie Loveland’s book [unsolved mysteries theme song], poems about the TV series Unsolved Mysteries, is coming out in 2023 Valerie’s previous piece: Jose Chung’s From Outer Space (Issue 65)

I can’t find my footing on this sliver of a sidewalk. I curse whoever slappedthese streets onto this hillside, tipping the contents of the steepdriveways into the streets,tipping the streets down the slopes into the valley.The main plaza is cleared and flat so the grand buildings can stand,but the streets start climbing immediately all around […]

i have decided to stop swearing. instead, i will sweat off love foreverand wake up each day swimming in gentleness, kisses to the napeof my neck, declaring i need you and i want this and lets stay herelouder and louder for the people in the back! until even the sun hearsme and winter starts coming […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]