1 February 2023

by Anna Christian

imp pulse (toward a playful nudge) sucking up the water from my eye he performs a burp i mime inhaling it i remember the Erykah Badu movie not her movie but of sitting in his car outside the theater, crying laughing about a baby Badu being told she reminds people of their grandmothers.

Viernes Para Recordar

by Sam Moe

You, body exhausted and mind racing, alone on the faded gold couch in her living room. Fourth-floor apartment with decaying steps, more than the occasional cockroach in the kitchen, once there were mice and now there are rats, some- times centipedes, the landlord took away the claw-foot tub and this, too, becomes a mourning. It is late, witching hour, still time to go before morning rises over Manhattan, yet there are still people awake, screaming, singing, laughing, in the distance are sirens, more laughter. In your ear, soft and warm, a single, loud sigh.

Upon Learning of Your Death While Waiting to See the Barbie Movie

by Joan Kwon Glass

It seems only fitting that on the movie screen, Barbie too, has been thinking of death, called to an unseen portal and what it means to be human. How astonishing that I am one of the oldest women in this theater. That in spite of my devotion to self-destruction, in spite of the world with its absurd cruelties and terrible longings, here I sit

Dog Shit

by H.R. Webster

The proliferation of dog shit bags, filled with dog shit, on the beach leads me to believe people are more interested in appearing good than being good.

Of Owed Breath

by Ayling Zulema Dominguez

There is a “Hanging Tree” in Goliad whose brown limbs never imagined holding the brown limbs of another being.

Where You Are Going, I Have Been

by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

1941 Fita was the only person who knew about Paloma going to the States. Paloma ate the secret, stuffed it in her taut belly and refused to tell Mami, Papi or Luisa. Fita knew because Fita was special. Fita was there when Paloma’s Mami spit and wept and hit Paloma fierce. Fita, she who was not family, was her closest family.

Moving Place :: A Small Rebellion

by Eros Livieratos

Everything I own is in boxes. Sliced my finger on cardboard trying to unearth Debord for a paper I’ll never write.

It Took Me Twenty Years

by Christian Bancroft

Pink-Eye

by Farrah Fang

puss-swollen headlights: dilations outlining of bone and yolk transmuting; machete-deep in the sockets plugged in unpretentious

Self Portrait as a Difficult Name

by Paola Capó-García

Paola was my mother’s middle finger to my father’s mother who demanded I be named after her. Edith was too risky of a prophecy, my mother is not a gambler. Italian for small, which I tried to be my whole life and failed, according to the worst parts of myself. Perhaps she named me this as a prayer.

Doomsday

by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Fig of Unfolding

by Octavio Quintanilla

Tonight, I expect the only star in the sky to be so bright I’ll forget all I know about sorrow, how it feels like sandpaper against skin, how it looks like the old woman my mother has become.