This month we’re excited to bring you a featured interviewed with Black poet & essayist Taylor Byas. Make sure to read her interview below, as well as her Creative Nonfiction piece Tiger Stripes. Taylor Byas is a Black poet and essayist from Chicago. She currently lives in Cincinnati, where she is a second year PhD…
Read MoreBy Taylor Byas Content Warning: Mentions of Eating Disorders and Abusive Relationships While scrolling through Instagram, I come across a picture of a woman’s stomach, glitter painted over her stretchmarks in different colors. The caption reads, Love yourself. At first glance, it looks like colorful trees sprouting from the elastic band of her leggings. Inspired,…
Read MoreBy Saswati Chatterjee One of you is not like the others. I suspect it is you. The others were born at dawn; you stretched your neck, sinewy and perfect, at midnight. Your brother played in the edges of twilight, you darted about in its shadows as secretive as your heart. You whisper like a leaf…
Read MoreBy Maya Sistruck I throw my body back against my bed, the force causing the frame to wobble slightly. Don’t look. Don’t even think about it. I’m thinking about it. I peer down an awkward angle to the phone on my belly, glowing blue against the fabric of my hoodie. Still blue, probably not even read yet. Don’t…
Read MoreBy Charlie Gleeson I feel my hand, exacting a slow breaststroke, touch something gelatinous. There are moon jellies all around us, floating just below the surface of the Baltic Sea’s turquoise mountain peaks. Like Ponyo’s cartoon jellyfish—translucent shells painted with four-petaled rose windows, from which blooms a center where short tentacles fan out below. We…
Read MoreBy Jose Useche Content Warning: mentions of sexual assault III. I wish I remembered his last name, but I think it was Vasquez. I wish I remembered how old he was, but I think it was 24. I wish I remembered how old I was, but I told him 17. What I do remember is…
Read MoreBy Hannah Jingwen Lee I tell you three lies on our honeymoon. You have no idea. Pools of sweat under your arms, neckline a deep red V blanching fingertips’ shape, you are too busy facing China head-on. I buy you a succession of wide-brimmed hats, and you laugh at the figure in the hotel mirror.…
Read MoreBY Michelle Mehrtens It began with Disney Channel houses. Large, shingled, two-story homes with big windows. Usually painted an eggshell blue, or, perhaps, a starchy white with a provocative red front door. Inside, the Disney protagonist dropped her backpack on the floor and walked—shoes, perversely, still on—to the kitchen island, where she grabbed a Granny…
Read MoreBy Tom Williams In Front Street Liquors, hauling two fifths of Benchmark and a thirty of Bud, I see my third grade teacher working the counter. Mrs. Blunt was the only black teacher I had until graduate school. Will she remember me or have the past twenty two years removed all traces of the soft…
Read MoreBy Jose Useche II. He had permanently red cheeks—rosacea. It seemed, as a baby, someone had crushed rose petals in a mortar and pestle and rubbed the dust across his face, permanently branding him as a warning. When he danced, he glowed even redder, and I wanted to be him. Every day, after 3rd period,…
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