We’re off until September 21, though we’re still accepting and reading new submissions!

Mark Seelos

“Xoe the dog is looking at me disapprovingly.”

Roxie Williams

We show up.
We don’t complain.
We do all we can to avoid death by plague.

Ashley Ward

“the apprehension that haunts me
is found in you becoming privy
to the recesses of my heart.”

Melissa Calderon-Rougié

“comfort always comes with a price tag”

Vic Nogay

“we pack and process death
into a bottle of ‘sad, shocked, scared...’”

Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo

“They set us on fire, and yet they call us brothers.”

Genevieve Murdick

“This hot-sounding social worker does breathing exercises with me over the phone. Secretly, I count this as ‘a date.’  I am exactly that lonely.”

Richard LeDue

“A bird flew into my living room window.
Too small to break the glass,
it had no choice
but to land after the crash,
quivering,
waiting to die”

Heather Hughes

“The six feet between us was impassable, and drowned out a lot of what we needed to express to each other.”

Taylor Dann

“I know what it's like to spend time alone. I never knew how to spend alone time.”

Koss

“I spent two days alone with no phone
haunting your apartment after you died.” 

Koss

“tension the silence slice it even”

Fizza Abbas

“Yeast of misery, flour of abuse:
a loaf of bread, too, can amuse.”

Yasmilka Clase

“Grey wolves prowl on West 145th Street
they hunger for the fragmented Janine”

Laura Owens

A poem for candles that burn twice as bright.

Ryan Mayer

Between a bar and a church, a stray cat offers absolution.

Thad DeVassie

“Not going felt like forfeiture, giving permission to lose a year in the midst of losing a year.“

Ian Macartney

Even light pollution hovered below the darkness
negotiating with its formidable opponent,
the atmosphere.

Oelania Rubino & Stephanie Gaitán

As we worked through this series, editing the stories and reflecting on their contents, it became an opportunity to reflect on our own relationship to this vibrant and complex homeland.