You stood in our living room just after your first birthday as the television played aerial footage of prisoners in hazmat suits lowering caskets into mass graves. Mercifully, you’ll have no memory of it, but your early life unfolded as death felt just there, right outside the front door, delivered by a friend's fingertips, floating on a loved one’s breath.
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All Light Is Half Light by John A. Nieves
Some cold nights the fog tinkles against the wind- / ows and shushes along the roof like a paper bag.
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A Normal Interview with Vauhini Vara by Talia Kolluri
[T]he argument I’m making in the book is that by resisting the narrative of inevitability offered by Big Tech companies and their CEOs and investors, we might open ourselves up to other possibilities — maybe possibilities we haven’t even imagined yet…
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Queer Femme Asks A Man To Forgive Their Sin by Mateo Perez Lara
I wait for an arrow quiver / strike to kill my aches / & when I look in the mirror / I want to throw knives
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Two Poems by Jude Achilles Misick
I spent my childhood practicing girlhood, / wearing dresses that flowed around my ankles, / and stuffing myself full of honey
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Two Poems by Jeannine Gailey
I walk outside and above us an open mouth / to the universe – light streaming towards us, / an invitation.
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A Normal Interview with Trinity Nguyen by Hope Vang
“I think grief and loss were natural themes that emerged as I wrote. Since the American War in Vietnam is such a recent event, it touches every aspect of my characters and their story. In a sense, I couldn’t have written a novel about a Vietnamese American girl going to Vietnam without exploring the diasporic grief and these complex feelings related to home and belonging.”
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Composition by Sharon Gusky
Barbie and Ken aren’t together much these days. Ken is often with another doll he has met. Barbie knows this, too. You could not say that “the other” is taller, or slimmer, or more beautiful than Barbie. Barbie and her look alike, except for their hair color.
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Ribs by Miles Parnegg
They pass the Styrofoam cups of potato salad laced with dill, and sometimes go for the banana pudding shingled with vanilla wafers. That is the point, the sharing. They’ve grown tired of individuating, making protective decisions, catering to specific tastes.
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Surfer's Journal: Part One by Ann Petroliunas
I am three days into a new life. In a new state in a new town at a new elevation where there are other things for single 30-year-olds to do than attend baby showers and bridal brunches. Three days into a new life and I am sitting on a beach waiting for a surf instructor, fantasizing about his abs and our potential.
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Dissapearing Act by Peter McInerney
A week later and the horse is a hollow shipwreck, ribcage bared to the quartermoon. The jetsam of carrion eaters strewn amidst a palimpsest of tracks printed in the dirt.
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Bodies Leashed, Bodies Glanced, Bodies Freed, Bodies Danced by Joe Baumann
His mother’s doppelganger reached the water first. She did not break her stride. There was no fanfare, no grandiose gesture at the miracle of it all. She simply kept walking, her gait keeping its same rhythm as her feet set onto the shifting, slurping water as it rolled in and out.
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Oysters Rockefeller by Brad Kavo
News comes back your cancer has spread, / so we go out to celebrate / you not being dead / yet.
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A Normal Interview with William Archila by Angelina Leaños
This is the great thing about immersing myself in the world I am creating in my work. The tropes, concepts, the culture and history, the places and characters, they all come together.
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Transplant by Yance Wyatt
our feet seized by quicksand / as the ocean breathes in and out / in and out / like one great pneumonic lung
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Heat Wave by Madeline Furlong
I could have gone to a bar; I could have skated down to the water and lit up and watched the lake waves. I could have rented a car and driven up to Caroline’s mother’s, banged on the door, refused to leave until Caroline came out. But soon I was standing in front of Cinema 17. The marquee listed one more showing.
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Alongside Blue by Afton Montgomery
I, alongside him, folded every napkin in the same direction. Nudged straight the faded carpet samples that made every cement step down to the basement a different frugal pattern and color. I wished our house number—off by only one digit—was a clean 12345.
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LEAVE ME AT THE BREAK by Benjamin Faro
Altogether we were / uncountable, and another / of us we abandoned / at the shore.
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Colors of Sound by Hantian Zhang
White emerges when all wavelengths of light reflect off an object with equal intensity, much like how white noise distributes its amplitude across its entire frequency range. Examples abound: running water, the whir of a fan, the hum of a vacuum.
Read MoreThe Great Food Question by Leah Harris
And I realize that layered in pasta and ham, spinach and oats, maybe the food question is really a language of love, a question of intimacy — because what’s closer to a person than the food they eat?
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