Illustration by Mimi Mutesa @mimimutesa I have got two feet, flat like that of my father, not at all ladylike. Aquarius feet, they dangle by the edge of the lake. It is sacred feet on some days, worshiped during puja, they wash my feet with cold water, clean my toes, bend and touch my feet, … Read moreWater Feet by Paridhi Poddar
Illustration by Mimi Mutesa @mimimutesa they say that the stars are not ours to name because the Big Dipper was a wild bear hunting in milky rivers that there was an oxen, or maybe a coyote who shot an arrow trail to the heavens, paving a starry path and left its friends behind in the … Read morestar(dust) by Paridhi Poddar
Illustration by Mimi Mutesa @mimimutesa I wonder how he’s faring night after night in my closet. Darkness reveals his lemonseed eyes, that dear serpentine stalker, my monster. Perhaps he’s a cousin to that watersnake who curled up next to my body on warm bedrock. The same one that slithered after me through the rushing waters … Read moreArmistice by Nicholas Barnes
I walk down that aisle,hands pressed together. I wear the finest Filipino pineapple silkand it caresses my skin in the smoothest of scratches. You look so nice, my teachers saywhen they ask what kind of shirt I’m wearing. I think, now, fondly of my barongthough my childish self seemed to hide awayfrom the very thing … Read morePineapple Silk by Zero the Fool
Denims are in demandamong girls The denim crazeinexplicableexplains itself Denim conceals the pre-modern. We are a pre-modern people, faking modernity, and the easiest recourse is to clothe ourselves otherwise. We are ruled by a dynasty, we live in a fake nation-state, we pretend to love the chasha-bhusha*, the Volk, we despise (the chasha-bhusha who furnished … Read moreDenim Daughters, Modern Daughters by Iftekhar Sayeed
When the Bay calls me home,I watch hella roll off my tonguelike a Bay Area baptism.An extraterrestrial vocabulary,that when people ask where I am from,I am home,no ruby slippers needed.Taking me back to 2003And So Cal Dougie couldn’t wrap his mind around a word between really and a lot ofand saved my nameon his phone … Read moreODE TO HELLA by Ellie Lopez
Lyn Patterson is an educator, dancer, writer, and MFA student originally from Seattle,Washington. Her work has been published in Perennial Press, Popshot Magazine, and Allegory Ridges’ poetry anthology Aurora. She is a deeply invigorated storyteller who delves into themes such as identity, equity, overcoming trauma, accepting your wild and learning to listen to your intuition. … Read moreTO THE MAN ON THE TRAIN by Lyn Patterson
For the Zulu musicians it is late, but the med students in New York Yankees T-shirts are screaming for more music. Their skin, pale as x-rays, glints in the nightclub. They’ve whiskeyed the night, danced like victors in a tribal war or what they figure victors dance like. They’ve shed their scrub uniforms for one … Read moreThe Nightclub by John Davis
When the world went mad,I permitted myself to go mad with it.The world split in half, andRaging in red, spilling its own blood,I snuck underground instead.I laughed yellow bubbleslike a hyena drunk on champagne.I blew grass all day, up up up,Till the gold pines flickered blue.I bathed in the babbling river of hope,kaleidoscope tears washing … Read moreFeral by Mimi Mutesa
I wonder:If you still have worlds inside you worth exploring,Miles within you worth running,Notions and knotsOf ideas and thoughtsWorth spending my time detangling. Tess is a Vancouver-based British Chinese writer working on her first memoir, Replant. Her creative non-fiction has been published in Untitled: Voices, her poetry in Overachiever and Isele magazine, and her spoken … Read moreMind Maps by Tess