“in every in-between / I was born ready / yet I have still afforded
to lose / over not having / a house / a man / a body / a life”
Two Poems | Ayesha Raees
Our Spring 2020 Issue Is Live
When you place an order for Issue 35, 100% of reader donations will support Equality For Flatbush and The Okra Project. Help us amplify anti-racist efforts and change our institutions.
An Interview | Emily Neuberger on the Golden Age of Musical Theater
Growing up between Lake Forest, Illinois, and Long Island, New York, debut novelist Emily Neuberger dreamt of the Broadway stage. She began voice lessons early, at age twelve, and, throughout her adolescence, starred in numerous community and regional productions. She went on to study musical theater at NYU, along with […]
Troupe 98 | Paige Zubel
hi hello my name is sarah yes there are three other girls in my troupe named sarah yes I hate it yes I know hate is a very strong word would you like to buy troupe 98 candy from me so I can win the big blue excaliber mountain bike would you like to buy something?
My Name is Arnold | Wynne Hungerford
Beginnings I came into this world in 1947, Austria. My upbringing was typical of the time and place, although perhaps my parents were stricter than others because my father was the local chief of police. Whenever I disobeyed my parents, the consequence was always the same. I was forced to […]
An Interview | Patty Gone on Understanding Gender Poles Through Danielle Steel
Patty Gone makes art about popular things. They have a strong curiosity for what makes people obsessed with Kim Kardashian or why people want to dress in all Gucci. Their work often focuses on different poles in culture and gender in the attempt to draw people toward some kind of […]
An Interview | Pema Tseden on Folktales, Films, and Creativity
Award-winning Tibetan writer and filmmaker, Pema Tseden, makes a stop in NYC along his US tour to discuss his English-language debut, Enticement: Stories of Tibet.
Three Poems | Taisia Kitaiskaia
SHE SPITS & TOUCHES HER TONGUE TO HER LUNGS I was outside myself, picking corn in a tall shadow,When I was ordained to be an Anglo-SaxonWarrior making my head from my own head, makingAn extraordinary instrument from which we shallAll suffer madly. And the mirror was always a jewel,And the […]
A Boy Turns the Key His Own Breath Bursts | Dan Rosenberg
Dan Rosenberg is the author of cadabra (Carnegie Mellon University Press) and The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press), which won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize. He has also written two chapbooks, A Thread of Hands (Tilt Press) and Thigh’s Hollow (Omnidawn), which won the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, and he co-translated Miklavž Komelj’s Hippodrome (Zephyr Press). Rosenberg’s poems have […]
Sprats | R. Sebastian Bennett
Tokyo, JAPAN – 1989 Lizzie and her cousin, Kate, were giggling like schoolgirls inside their room at Sanjo boarding house. I knocked on the door, softly at first, then louder—three virile raps. Lizzie opened the door. She was wearing pink pajama pants and a lacy T-shirt. “It’s the American.” She […]
from Nimbusclud | Cara Scarmack
Onstage: Two porthole windows suspended in space.
Also, at least one wall (if not all of the walls) is completely covered by dark fabric that stretches from floor to ceiling.
The fabric flutters and ripples every now and again.
An Interview | Karan Mahajan on Cricket, Distance, and Histories of the Present
Karan Mahajan is the author of two novels, Family Planning and The Association of Small Bombs. His second novel drew me into his work through its unusual structure, in which the story radiated from the center and expanded outwards just like a bomb. When I read a novel and think […]
The daughter of my voice | Monroe Lawrence
Monroe Lawrence was born and grew up on unceded Coast Salish Lands. His favourite writers include Hannah Weiner, Vi Khi Nao, Marcel Proust, and listen chen. His past writing can be found in Best American Experimental Writing and The Capilano Review, and in a chapbook, Nice,.
“Materials for Love” | An Interview with Madeleine Barnes and Michelle Maher
With both their debut volumes of poetry appearing this year, the mother and daughter discuss collaboration, pronouns, and the imperative not to look away. Madeleine Barnes and Michelle Maher embody an ode to the family. In the era of viral elegy, in a winter where World War III is trending, […]
Three Poems | Madeleine Barnes
(Read an interview with Barnes and her mother, Michelle Maher, on the site here.) DIAGNOSIS I do not call you out of your hideaway. No one knows how much time. I do not say How much time? I do not make offerings. I do not shake out the wreath of […]
Notes from the Insomniac | Ben Morgan
Ben Morgan is in a one-man punk band from Suffolk, United Kingdom. He graduated from University College London where he studied English Literature and was published in Savage. He has received no accolades of note.
English