Online Issues
-
Personal History of the Cherry Bomb
by Bart Plantenga
photo: collection of the author
You and I cannot believe our eyes anymore. Observe: A man on a glimmering stretch of walk in a tight, shiny suit, the kind start-up guys wear, was jimmying the lock on my bike with what could have been a hunting knife.
“HEY!” Startled, he pivoted and dashed off. I gave chase because I’d been reassured by characters seen in crime dramas that chase scenes usually end with their man in cuffs.
He was young, so it surprised me to be gaining on him so quickly.
-
utopia
by mic jones
art by by Rachel Rava
a pronoun can be an emergency
exit a map an experiment
in emancipation like fire
embalming coordinateslet’s make new names what would the world feel
like if gender was understood
the way we understand
a name:
singular
subject to change
sounding different
depending on
through whom
the sound is madeamid mountain ranges
screamed like names
our genders’ echo
sublime as the valley
amplifying bodiless-ness
& -
“All The Fighting Parts” an interview with Hannah V. Sawyerr (poetry ’22) and an excerpt from her debut YA novel
Interview by Jonathan Kesh
All The Fighting Parts, the debut novel in verse from Hannah V. Sawyerr, is a challenging, poetic tale about overcoming trauma and learning to fight back.
The story follows high-schooler Amina Conteh as she struggles to navigate a tightly-knit community centered entirely around the charismatic Pastor Johnson, who runs the Holy Tabernacle church. When the pastor attacks Amina one night at the church, she finds herself isolated, no longer sure of how to use her voice and unable to connect with her loved ones within Pastor Johnson’s orbit.
-
Morning Sex
By Eileen G’Sell
photo by Marlene Leppänen on Pexels
I didn’t hear you say Charles De Gaulle and thought you meant the mayor.
It’s true I held your hand like a man. Your fridge, clean as alien
spacecraft, makes me want to mess your mattress. Lie back now while I
pretend to be appalled at the things you think about saying. I love that you
love the name “Lina Bembe”. -
Memories of Drinks Past
by Michael Cannistraci
It was 1979 in Los Angeles. I was twenty-two, struggling as an actor, and struggling in general. My dreams of stardom had fizzled after graduation from college; aside from taking expensive acting classes, I wasn’t performing anywhere.
I got a job going door to door, recruiting men for a government vasectomy study. The work was easy, but the pay was lousy, and I had to buy my own gas. My girlfriend suggested I try bartending to make a living after she observed a bartender in a funky, dive surfer bar in Venice Beach counting a wad of cash on one of our dates.
-
The Docket
by Shira Dentz
photo by Benni Fish on Pexels
This landing strip has seen many falls—
shoehorn soft gliding into a shoe
or curdling against the pressure
presence of time drifting
then landing a perfect minimalist
geometry otherwise known as
settled like home.This landing strip has seen many falls—
shoehorn left shapely into a shoe or
curdling against the pressure all
charisma of time drifting then
landing a turning minimalist geo-
me-try otherwise known as
settled some mummy of home.
