Writing Toward Grief: A Conversation with Cass Donish
Cass Donish is a queer poet, writer, and educator from Greater Los Angeles. They earned an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where…
Featured Issue 16
Excerpts from “Kelly in Violet” by Cass Donish
These excerpts are reprinted from Cass Donish’s collection, Your Dazzling Death, published by Knopf in 2024. Read our interview with Cass Donish here. Cass…
5 Poems by Dorothea Lasky
A green apple that ignites the night/ A green ghost with its mouth open/ On the fourth thumb a green ghost/ With a wild tongue
Nonfiction
“Scorpion Diary” by Melissa Olson-Petrie
Intro question option 1: Your worst or grossest job? Example: Sterile processing technician (cleaning bloody surgical instruments). Intro question option 2: Your most interesting…
“Blood Stains, Flame Tree” by Efe Rosario
There were at least eight of us around the flame tree. I can only remember William and Albert, who lived right below the apartment…
“The Sky is a Time Machine” by Kilmeny MacMichael
On the other side of a screen, forty-one walking days away, a woman begins to explain something we can’t really explain at all. She…
Poetry
Excerpts from “Kelly in Violet” by Cass Donish
These excerpts are reprinted from Cass Donish’s collection, Your Dazzling Death, published by Knopf in 2024. Read our interview with Cass Donish here. Cass…
5 Poems by Dorothea Lasky
A green apple that ignites the night/ A green ghost with its mouth open/ On the fourth thumb a green ghost/ With a wild tongue
“The Middle Ages” by Luci Arbus-Scandiffio
So you wake up / Smelling like woodchips / Picking the straw from your sleeve
“The Pros and Cons of Hugging” by Violet Piper
timestamps / suspension / cherishing shields
“The Kiss” by Kate Welsh
When he leaves, I go to a new / gynecologist’ or ‘In my linoleum kitchen, the knife flashes / in the sallow light
“Swiping Right in Myrtle Beach” by Erin Slaughter
Are you / my husband? Are you my brightest / wound?
“Sundown, no homo.” by Chidera Offor
Desire is an endless bend but also / pearlescent sweat and heat
“Version in Which Rumpelstiltskin’s Queen Fails to Close the Deal” by Stefanie Kirby
You carry a spool / against your empty / body
“Autumn” by Matthew Buxton
all that flare in a death-rattle sunset soaking the backroads
Two Poems by Christine Kwon
Once, mother chased a little ecstasy / like a squirrel up a tree
Art
Art by Amanda Yskamp
Amanda Yskamp is a writer and a collagist. Her artwork has appeared in such magazines as Black Rabbit, Riddled with Arrows, and Stoneboat. She…
Three Single Panel Comics by Isaac George Lauritsen
Isaac George Lauritsen’s acts of writing, drawing, and living most often take place in his hometown of Chicago. Words and images can be found…