By Jenee Rodriguez I adore a mystery.Now, at 26,I never felt more like one in my life. My past is in the clear water,and I say thank you each dayfor the things I thought aboutat 16, 18, 20, 21. Mistakes have become memories,some universal heartbreaks,some […]
By SJ Griffin Every fat person will tell you that no one has been there for them like food has. Not my girlfriend, my dog, or even my mom compares to what I feel with food. But there’s loathing in that relationship too. I moan […]
Looking down By Austin Metze Leaning in over the swamp’s edgeI’m drawn to an anomaly—intensely dark pulsing water,like an oil spill in the shape of an archipelago;Long Island viewed from 10,000 feet,early morning commuters beginning to stir. A mass of frog embryos,having just crossed over […]
By Amber Pierson My bones are blue, creaking andClacking as I amble my way throughLife, twisting and turning, upside downAnd backwards. My blood is green,Sloshing and toxic, poisonous, seepingThrough my skin, burning any handsThat reach too close. My heart is gray,Melancholy, thump, bump, beating,Beating in […]
By Pat LaPointe Before every holiday, we’d have what my family called the “boob hunt.” Sounds perverse, but it’s not. It was all about my mom’s famous fried chicken. Mom believed every holiday should include a dish that celebrated our heritage. While we appreciated the […]
By Erin Hall I come to you when I visit home. I press my index and middle fingers into my lips, and gently touch them against the smooth marble edge. I tell you about the traffic—so many idiots in the left lane, it would have […]
By Maria Smith Eight pairs of jeans became a source of mental agony for me when I moved from Colorado Springs to South Carolina in 2016. I got fixated on the idea that I needed to fit into a certain size, and I obsessed about […]
A Love Letter from Hospital By Sandeep Kumar Mishra Hospitals are ideograms of truthwhere death has no false tint of life—pukka pain, pink anguish, but stained hope.You might see Hoag’s a galaxywithin a galaxy within a galaxy. . .Once we enter here it seems a […]
By Van Lanigh From the Photographer: Inspired by great masters such as Vrubel and Monet, Van Lanigh creates figurative and landscape pieces. Her unique style is a reaction to abstractionism, an attempt to capture surrealistic yet casual reality. The series “Chasing Rainbows” is about the […]
When I Was a Hunter Gatherer By Jane Yolen in the deep cleft of Nature,watching the stalk of bobcat,the instant whirr of hummingbird,the snake-cut grasses, fear did not rise uplike a clog in my throatbut in cautious passion,the kind that makes one stay,observe,listenattend,fill with wonder,love— […]