Mitchell Nobis

I dream of my children sleeping through nights.

Roger Li

Warm water spills atop

steaming skin & down

my neck where nooses

slip unseen.

Adrian Ridley

Step outside, put on your headphones, find your escape.

Josh Castillo

“I always steered toward the heels. Clunky two-inch brown leather heels, hidden beneath my grandmother’s bed. Maybe they made me feel powerful. I was smaller than the average kid, and to feel tall was to feel formidable.”

Wumxnn

Lean on me, when you’re not strong.

Liyah Iman

"For us, living,
really living,
was never in the picture.”

Irene Cooper

i watched a murder of crows flap back an intruder.
then they disappeared into the trees.
birds don’t fucking play. they don’t.

Stephanie Gaitán

A daughter reflects on her father's coming out, and her own.

Dean Hernandez

Quieting the contradiction of yearning for touch during physical distance.

Shareen K. Murayama

We get burned loving what we love.

C. Adán Cabrera

That was my first time, you whisper to the dustless dashboard. You lick your lips and savor the caffeine. Well, you’re my first Mexican, he grins, knowing full well your family comes from El Salvador.

Jennifer Stitt

What really exists?

Not things made or unmade. Only
things in-the-making. Only things un-
caged. Silently springing

Patrick Pawlowski

Sometimes a stifled cough is the whole performance.

John Biguenet

“First thing they say, the ones rode out the storm, the ones trapped on their roofs three, four days after the levees collapsed, waiting for the United States to arrive don’t come till the end of the week, first thing they tell you, ‘It was silent, man. Silent like you never heard before.’”

Chapelle Johnson

I see myself as a little girl at Sunday school. There’s a boy sobbing uncontrollably. Another boy had informed him of the inevitability of death. “We all die.” He says. “Duh.”

Leopoldo Tablante

“I suspect that, in their minds, dogs were no different than men, particularly “bad-ass” men. In both cases, they seemed to believe that a little fight might just be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Emily Farranto

Cracked in 4:33

Henrietta Butler

On Juneteenth, remembering the history of slavery through the words of Henrietta Butler, formerly enslaved. 

Ally Noyes

“i put on earrings for this”

Deja Groomes

“The lingering aura of that last Mardi Gras reminded me why New Orleans has always been fictionalized as a place with its own mystique; somehow more authentic than other American cities.”