Poetry by Evie Shockley
the musician stands out
Issue No. 8
Poetry
Poetry by Tess Brown-Lavoie
ICE IN A WOODEN BOX
Poetry by Jeremy Michael Clark
Whole Life | Home | Unauthorized Autobiography
Poetry by Scout Katherine Turkel
Neurosis Tercets | Gauche Landscape
Poetry by Dylon Jones
Mud Pit | Feeding the Whippoorwills | Expat | Letter to a Boy Back Home
Poetry by Bailey Cohen-Vera
IF YOU ASK ME WHY I BOUGHT MANZANA I’M GONNA TELL YOU IT WAS FOR THE CULTURE | and other poems
Poetry by Jennifer Kronovet
Peacock Island, Its Alchemist | Peacock Island, Its Alchemist | x
Poetry by Ruth Awad
Learning Arabic | After the Argument
Fiction
“Lights Underwater” By Jeffery Ryan Long
We like to think the Maestro believes in something—we like to believe everybody believes in something. Perhaps he sees his temple in the Kaka‘ako construction sites at dusk, its chorus as the interminable traffic down Ala Moana Boulevard and Nimitz Highway. . .
“The Side Gig” by K. Joffré
You couldn’t look like a black Harvey Fierstein in drag, live to be in your sixties, and not have learned a thing or two about surviving. . .
“Invasive Species” by Nick Kapsa Vare
These foreign Creepy-Crawlies colonized his mind. They rubbed and kissed and caressed him. They whispered notions into his root hairs and his stomata. “Don’t be ashamed,” they seemed to say. “There is no shame in being a tree.”
“Viaduct Rodeo” by Maria-Luiza Brisbane
His coach had asked José to stay and help him train new riders. But working around the animals, inhaling their earthy, rank salty smells, hearing them snort and bellow, and not being able to mount and dominate them became excruciatingly painful to contemplate for him, much more so than any aching in his knee. . .
NonFiction
“The Shadows of Trees on the Wall” by Brandon Shimoda
She killed herself the year after I graduated. That she killed herself and was half-Asian was coincidental. Or, no one made the connection. But I could not help making it. . .
“Bleeder” by M. M. Carrigan
On Twitter, she shares reviews of her recent memoir, which is being touted as reinvention of the form. Meanwhile, on my Twitter, I posted a picture of a California Raisins coffee mug I found at the thrift store. It was 99 cents, and it says “Merry Christmas 1988.” A grand new vessel for my tears. . .
“Laughter: A Triptych” by Julie Marie Wade
If there was a God, He must have been rolling in the aisles of that out-of-sight sanctuary when, on the day I was supposed to marry Charlie, I pronounced “I don’t” instead. . .
“The Field: Dancing for Merce Cunningham” by Maya Sonenberg
A field is a field—outdoors, bounded by trees or a stream, a road, a house, the sky—or indoors, bounded by mirrors, the edge of the sprung floor, the wings. . .