

Uncharted Territory
Kelly Esparza
“I was drawn to a place I’d never been to before. It was like a secret that I’d stumbled upon—one that was special and all mine.”

Overheard in a Church Basement on Christmas Eve
Catherine Gigante-Brown
Poem for a man in search of some basic human dignity.


Biting a Penny
DS Maolalaí
“the city, from
some angles, explodes
like an overstuffed flowerpot.”

The City of its Own Truth
Daniel Romo
“When you are here, you are always on a permanent vacation from gentrification.”

The Assessment
Elianna Lippold-Johnson
“We are sorry to inform you
but the house must come down.”

433 Notes: “Why do we love birds?”
Marisabel Rodriguez Ramos
A conversation on birds and the anthropocene with Erik Anderson, author of Bird (Bloomsbury, 2020)


How to lose friends (who you don’t really like)
Palmer Smith
Wait about four days to respond
to a short text like “how r u?”
and make sure to write
“everything is fine.”

Daily Rounds
Adam Chabot
“He gets it. He knows what “sick” means. He’s felt it. But it’s a terrible line.”

After Watching Me Hang the Christmas Lights
Aaron Sandberg
Christmas lights or a house on fire? Depends on how you look at it.


The September of the West
John Chrostek
“May the good growth, the better way
take its place come the spring.”

Hopes and Fears
Kendra King
“I may not be an artist, but I wanted to record what went through my mind, in the best way I could (with my son's Crayola set) and not worry about what I am, how good I am, or what I am not.”

Dream Sequence: A Polyptych
Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani
“I miss my mother. I might visit her today.”

Ode to My Friend with a Swastika on His Forehead
Justin Rovillos Monson
“If a race war pops off, we all know what it is”

Lamplighter
Alan Ten-Hoeve
A father finds that the pandemic has let him fall out of old mundane habits, and he’d give anything to have that innocuousness back.

MIGHT MESS AROUND AND CONFESS MY LOVE TO YOU IN THE POURING RAIN ON A COLD FALL NIGHT
Shawn Berman
“and i can’t afford to be out in inclement weather without
health insurance these days”

