You’ve felt like this since you became conscious at four years old. Always rushing to smother your sibling with a blanket to protect them from the cold. You can be too much. You want with an adrenal magnitude. You want the squares of sky in between the skyline, you want the sweet young trees, you want the girl bent over on the side of the passing bus, orange juice, pie and big drinks of wine.
Toronto 488 | Aaron Kreuter
That night, I feverishly read through the novel, sitting at my mother’s kitchen table in the dark, my cup of coffee long cold beside me. This was it. This was what I had been trying to do for all those years. The novel’s characters grew up in Jewish Montreal in the sixties and seventies, moved to Toronto in the eighties, bringing with them their dramas, their prejudices, their recipes, their joys.
Postcard From the Edge | Sara McAulay
I closed my eyes. The narrow rocky trail. The deep, deep canyon. My stomach reeled. No guardrail, no parachute, no wings, and me with no terminal illness. Me, weaker than I’d ever suspected I could be. “How soon? I’ve got deadlines. Could we wait till Fall?”
She laughed again, then coughed, coughed again, her whole frame wracked. “For you,” when she could speak, “for you, I’ll buy a postcard.”
Tear | Jared Daniel Fagen
Jared Daniel Fagen is the author of The Animal of Existence (Black Square Editions, 2022). His prose poems, essays, and conversations have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Lana Turner, and Asymptote, among other publications. He is the editor and publisher of Black Sun Lit, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York. Born in Jeollanam-do, South Korea, he lives in Brooklyn and the western Catskills.
Metric Birthday | Aley Waterman
The days are long and light so late. Ceremony is the faint lull of your roommate playing “Linger on your pale blue eyes” through a thin painted wall while you boil a kettle. The inside of a blue eye is like Iceland. Iceland is like a hot bath body with a cold forehead but you haven’t been, except in the airport. The Reykjavik airport is like a coffee shop.
Two Poems from Hyperphantasia | Sara Deniz Akant
“Hyperphantasia” and “Dear Phanta” from Hyperphantasia (Rescue Press, 2022) by Sara Deniz Akant. Published with permission of Rescue Press. Sara Deniz Akant is a Turkish-American poet, educator, and performer. She is the author of Hyperphantasia (Rescue Press 2022), Babette (Rescue Press 2015), Parades (Omnidawn 2014), and Latronic Strag (Persistent Editions (2014). She teaches poetry as Professor of the Practice […]
The Wait | Lauren Bo
I contemplate the exhaustion of grief. Perhaps I’ve never truly known it, having never known the loss of a parent, spouse, or child. Please doctor, when will this unending grieving end? You were wrong. I grieved for six months, 180 days, 4000 hours, 15 million seconds. I did my duty.
Two Poems | Andrés Cerpa
Andrés Cerpa is the author of The Vault, longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award: Poetry, and Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy from Alice James Books. He was raised in Staten Island, NY.
LINGUINE NINETEEN (CITY CENTER) | tilghman goldsborough
Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough (b. Richmond, VA, USA, 1991). Poet. His work has appeared in The Mall, the Leveler, and Nomaterialism (vol II). Forthcoming work includes The Western with 1080 press and object 7 ( ,a subject loosely, ,bundled in a frame, ) with Futurepoem. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Cigarette | Gemini Wahhaj
She watched him from the back, the red glow of his cigarette a lone light against the black sky. Sometimes, she went out to join him, hastily dressed in a cotton kamiz and shalwar, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. He turned around and gave her a smile with his stained yellow teeth, then turned back to gaze at the street below with his large, almond-shaped eyes.
Three Poems | Emily Chan
Emily Chan lives and teaches in Iowa City, where she recently completed an MFA as the Iowa Arts (2021) and Alberta Metcalf Kelly Fellow (2022) of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. These pieces belong to a poetry collection in progress, entitled “Meta Verse.” Her work has appeared in collaboration with Hester Street and […]
Purity Culture: A Comedy in Seven Acts | Mikayla Schutte
I am fourteen. I am depressed. My doctor puts me on Zoloft, which decreases sex drives in adults, and prevents me from developing a sex drive in the first place. My fatal flaw is that I do not know this. Instead, I believe I am holy.
Like Jousting | James Yu
I crash cars. Or rather: I crash my body into cars. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. An aspirational statement. Here’s the truth: only twice in my life have I done this.
An Interview | Finding a Speaking Voice: Colm Tóibín’s “Vinegar Hill”
Irish politics, gay saunas, Expressionist painting, and the influence of Ashbery, Binchy, and Bishop on Tóibín’s captivating new book from Beacon Press, Vinegar Hill.
Of Calving | Taeyin Kang ChoGlueck
Taeyin Kang ChoGlueck (they/them) is a Korean writer born in Minneapolis and raised in S. Korea & the American Midwest. They’ve been a finalist for the Firsts! Kelsey Street Prize judged by Bhanu Kapil and the Kay Murphy Prize judged by Myung Mi Kim. They are a Lambda fellow of […]
Hunter’s Moon | Olga “Regina” Doi-Kollegger
If the harvest nights are clear, adults stir.
If comfortable, they talk about past loves. Accidents and hope. They complain about jobs and get even with the boss. They search for life’s rhythms. Delighted by the rhyme, they explore the possibilities of change. Then they lounge, drunk upon words.
Three Poems | Vi Khi Nao
VI KHI NAO, 2022 Lammy Award Winner of the Jim Duggins, PhD: Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, is the author of 17 books, including: A Brief Alphabet of Torture: Stories, which won FC2’s 2016 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize; the novels Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016) & Swimming with Dead Stars (The University of […]
Against Duplication | Chinekotam Yagazie
I remember these images in no particular order: _the fragility of his body, the sparkling nerdiness of his glasses, or the shimmering brilliance of his palm oil complexion. I was still thinking of bodies in terms of complexion when we first met. Although America has a way of taking away […]