Origin Story After Jenny Xie Photo by Yash Raut I. Once, I was a field of lost lights: shivering fireflies, the last wink of my eye. Come the faceless grass called we have something cold & circular for you to touch. Where did my limbs go? They thought of a girl carrying my name […]
Studio Visit Photo by Caleb Salomons Paint over the sketch of train tracks in Toledo, Ohio, until the canvas is the ochre of cobblestones in Toledo, Spain. Paint over the cobblestones in Toledo, Spain, until an alley darkens with the crimson of an hour in Toledo, Ohio. Paint over the hour in Toledo, Ohio, […]
Manuél Sánchez. Gull. San Juan Bay, Puerto Rico November 22, 1900 Photo by Hiva Sharifi the shrieks of gulls arrive unbodied like the whoops of Taíno warriors soaring ahead …………of their arrows. what would they churn up from the depths with their frenzied …………net of laughter? your farewell gestures, your shirt’s white wrists draw the […]
Ideation, With Figurative Language Photo by Aniruddh Dixit I have a dog. Standing on her hind legs, she barely makes it past my knee. By scent alone, she dredges a river curling around the stones of an old fort, & against my will, rips the head from anything that moves. So much of experience […]
Night Owls Winner of the 2022 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction Selected by Ramona Ausubel Photo by Mathew Schwartz Past dusk, Hom releases the squirrel. Huffing and delirious with pain from the BB shot embedded in a hind leg, it limps across the yard, seeking refuge in the shadowy expanse. Clouds disperse, unveiling a […]
The Laundry Photo by Emily Chung What was it like,” my partner asks, “growing up as you did?”—and I can only think to tell her about the laundry. So much for a family of three, it seemed. There was a chute in the closet beside my room, which made me think of the game […]
Catalogue Beginning with a Line from Marcelo Hernandez Castillo Photo By Radek Homola The music stopped playing years ago, but we’re still dancing. The naked maple still has so many leaves to release before we have any right to call it dead. How our children out back wildly thrash angels into snow without losing […]
Sophia Wants a Baby and So Do I Photo By Jeena Paradies On a large screen TV my uterus is projected in a darkened room. My uterus a shadowy field that a technician searches for growths, for water sprouts, that steal my natural resources. The technician searches the parts of me I cannot reach, […]
Her Singing Horses Photo By Nati Melnychuk My big sister’s horses are mostly dead horses. …………Once, her horses were talented horses; once, her horses were singing horses; once, people said …………my big sister’s horses had the most gorgeous young voices they’d heard. Everyone said …………she had show-stopping horses. Everyone said her horses were stars. […]
Self-Storage Photo By Joel Swick [The Bowl that Fills] I can’t conjure my own first memory, but I do remember Virginia Woolf’s. She was in the nursery at St. Ives in the Hebrides. The acorn on the end of the string from a window blind slid back and forth across the floor with the […]