watching a YouTuberdocument the history of Minecraft speedrunning. another day my date tells mea dream of studyingfilm archival workso she canpreserve porn. we go to a museumof postersand learn about a viral ad campaignthat predates my birth. i am transported. my primary partner describesan appalachian horror podcast i keep meaning to listen toand we watch […]
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For now the sun cliche-like has risenin full view of my living. For now our cats lean and rub live-bodied my feetas light opens slow to the room where I feed them enough to help them remain.For now I forget slash set aside this need to close forever slash I mouth phrasesand none are for […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Yaguareté White by Diego Báez In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Baéz grew up in central Illinois as […]
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As compelling as the richly symbolic, saturated artwork that graces its front cover, Jen Yáñez-Alaniz’s admittedly slim (but no less emotionally packed) debut chapbook, Surrogate Eater, is one not to miss. Part-critique of the gendered roles expected of the speaker, part-reclamation of the speaker’s sexual identity, Yáñez-Alaniz’s chapbook is not so much a read but […]
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Priyam Bhattacharya is from New Delhi, India. She works and learns in the field of psychology. She attempts to murmer and voice dreams, nightmares and observations through her paintings
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Lately I have stopped being able to recognize my face as a sum of its parts. When I stand in front of the mirror, pinching soft skin between accusatory fingers, the face that looks back is unrecognizable, each feature isolated like pieces of a disjointed puzzle. My reflection smiles at me and parts her lips, […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators One Impossible Step by Orides Fontela (translated by Chris Daniels) In her lifetime, Orides Fontela resisted all labels, all attempts to situate her work in a particular movement, school, tendency, or tradition. Here, in her first ever English-language collection, Fontela’s poetry continues to defy easy categorization. […]
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Anthropocene is currently accepting free poetry submissions during the month of December. Send 1-3 unpublished poems and a bio of no more than 50 words as one document to anthropocenepoetry@gmail.com. Deadline: 12/31. Feminist Press is accepting full-length book manuscripts. Submit a synopsis of your work, a brief explanation of why it is a good fit […]
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It’s cold without you and I’d rather you left me rawcurl against you I’ll try not to scream watching you smile as you rip away my skinI think it’s nice it’s really hell I start to dread being aloneevery second without you A BLESSING I say I want you gone from my lifeAfter you kiss me I am a hollowed-out shellI smile through […]
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Jessica Hsu is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, where her poems have won Hopwood awards. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in VIBE, Passengers Journal, HAD, and others.
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i wore my early days warm as bearskin, spinning out and into the sea. i told her that i wouldnever fall in love and she said just you wait, sweetheart, and guess what? i entered every room through the crack below the door, i licked clean plates to markthem mine, soft as i could, hated […]
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I thought a lot about trees while reading john compton’s latest chapbook. Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” was running through my head, but in the style of the soundtrack for Hereditary. Visions of arboreal shadows and sapling harbingers and brittle bark crumbling between blood filled my mind and ran like roots against my jaw. i use […]
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I. When your ex-boyfriend asks you to bake his wedding cake, say yes. It’s not about the money, although he will offer you a heaping mound of cash. He will spot you through the frosted storefront windows. Don’t make eye contact until you hear the door open. Pretend not to see him even though he […]
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Nearly halfway to 14 and I’ve slept with more men than my parents Pat and Steve would ever care to count. I know them by their names in my head, where the safety I can sometimes make happen looks like a sort of glow: outside, they have to be the Mom and Dad who get […]
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Kirsten Smith is a photographer, writer, and travel addict who lives and works in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in (or will soon appear in) SPANK the CARP, Esoterica Magazine, JAKE the Magazine, and Cosmic Daffodil. Check her out on Instagram @the_wallflower_wanderer and Twitter @Kirsten_Wanders.
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After Alessia Di Cesare the pine trees stayed the same shade of green and the thing is that i love you again.it’ that it hangs in my throat until we have glitter on our feet and sand in our eyes.that it was me breaking sticks and watching you shoot arrows, that i tried to tell […]
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Michal (Mitak) Mahgerefteh is an ESL poet and artist based in Virginia. She is the managing editor at Poetica Publishing, where she oversees the Miriam Rachimi Micro Chapbook Poetry Prize. Mahgerefteh has authored five poetry chapbooks, including In My Bustan, The Rising Song, What’s Left Behind, Field of Harps, and Sipping Memories. Her latest collection, FishMoon, will be released in 2024. In addition to […]
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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 […]
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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.
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Content warning: violence, self-harm Honey said holding onto memory is like trying to grasp water with spread fingers. She told me to hold on to the sweet ones, to turn my mind into cupped palms before they leak from the gaps of my fingers. If you remember anything, remember this: hold on, hold on, she’d […]
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Content warning: Mentions of sexual harassment and rape. No one warned me about boys. In Grade 6, I was ill-prepared when a group of them took my backpack and tossed it in the boy’s bathroom. My textbooks and notebooks were wet from whatever was leaking under the urinals. They locked me in as soon as […]
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Pepper Coast Lit is currently accepting poetry and prose submissions from Africans, people of color, those in the diaspora, descendants, and affiliates of the aforementioned. Send double/single-spaced work in 12-point Times New Roman and/or Palatino Linotype font as either .doc/.docx to peppercoastlitsubmissions@gmail.com. Do not include your name and email address anywhere in the document except in […]
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In Lara Atallah’s Exit Signs on a Seaside Hghway, poems bloom like stubborn flowers from a rubble of violence and heartbreak that is very much alive, presenting devastating paradoxes of love that knows its own futility and prevails anyway, and a hope that walks through fire, resisting annihilation, while never turning its back on the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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I’m in a race with my lungs. Well, not so much with them as against them. They haven’t been very accommodating lately. And for full transparency, they’re not really my lungs, I’m just using them to the best of my abilities. They belonged to someone else once, someone who, I heard unofficially, didn’t survive a […]
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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 […]
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Even after Phoebe returned from the funeral, she couldn’t bring herself to make any more half-hearted attempts at getting something on the canvas. The shades were never bright enough, the lines looked stiff and lifeless. Phoebe had tried different tools, different mediums, different canvas sizes. Nothing worked anymore. She decided to distract herself before bed, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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“Words are water” is a phrase that comes up repeatedly in Mina Ikemoto Ghosh’s novella Numamushi. Both words and water have the capability of being both beneficial and deadly to humans, and they both come in various forms that can be observed, deconstructed, and rebuilt. How words are used and examined can change depending on […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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)
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Featured Artists (from top left to bottom right) Maggie Chiang (Issue 8) Lorenza Centi (Issue 13) Isa Beniston (Issue 16) Andrew Holmquist (Issue 21) Monica Andino (Issue 25) Ramona Russu (Issue 36) Alexandra Dumitrică (Issue 39) Alyssa Moore (Issue 29) Danielle Morgan (Issue 42) Georgie Wileman (Issue 48) Pride Nyasha (Issue 33) Neha Hirve (Issue […]
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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 […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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This concrete-jungle had been painted green for my arrival, which was in great contrast to the sandy oasis of the Phoenix valley that I previously called home. Rumbling over the Whitestone Bridge, I caught the first glimpses of the Manhattan skyline delicately balanced on top of the shattered-glass East River. The taxi swerved around highway […]
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Kweli Fellowship Program (until 10/13): Early career vocational writers living in New York City, who are not enrolled in degree-granting programs, who have not yet contracted to publish a book, and who self-identify as Black, Native/First Nations, POC, and/or Arab American are invited to apply for Kweli’s year-long fellowship program. To apply, upload a cover […]
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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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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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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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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 […]
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VAGABOND CITY 