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Issue No. 34: Desire & Dread

SPRING / SUMMER 2025

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In Ananya Pandya’s “Girls Will Do Anything for Love,” a New Jersey tween feels a “walking behind her eyes,” exposing the quiet desperation of her South Asian immigrant community. M.E. Maguaga uses fragments to reconstruct her grandparents' forbidden love affair. Colleagues vanish in Mazi Kazemi's “The Last Great Lover in Iran” and reveal the fleeting nature of freedom under authoritarianism. With photography from Palestine by Maen Hammad, Ameen Abe Kaseem, and Samar Abu Elouf.

Unlocked Pieces

Features
In McDonald’s
June Glass
Fiction, Issue 34
In McDonald’s
June Glass
Fiction, Issue 34

You turn to see if he’s watching, if he’s afraid that you’ll leave, but can’t tell either way. Your jeans held your ass differently on hormones. You wonder if he can tell the difference.

June Glass
Fiction, Issue 34
“The Body Problem” & “Disaster and Me”
Nora Rose Thomas
Poetry, Issue 34
“The Body Problem” & “Disaster and Me”
Nora Rose Thomas
Poetry, Issue 34

the soft animal of my body is rotating in the 7/11 hot dog display

Nora Rose Thomas
Poetry, Issue 34
The Last Great Lover in Iran
Mazi Kazemi
Fiction, Issue 34
The Last Great Lover in Iran
Mazi Kazemi
Fiction, Issue 34

For Jahangir, a patriotic and pious man, every rule of Allah and law of the state was enforceable and unquestionable. Laws against holding hands. Laws against kissing. Laws against sex. Laws that made living a secret and Ali Reza a sought-after man.

Mazi Kazemi
Fiction, Issue 34
Waiting Ghazal
Asa Drake
Poetry, Issue 34
Waiting Ghazal
Asa Drake
Poetry, Issue 34

Wait for enough things at the same time, and every action becomes an effect.

Taking off a necklace. Watching a YouTube video on car repair. Drinking tea with jam we made this spring, when you told me that I just need a little more time. 

Asa Drake
Poetry, Issue 34
French Tarot on the Credenza
Greta Rainbow
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 34
French Tarot on the Credenza
Greta Rainbow
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 34

We sent a blast into our social universe asking for the joker to reveal themselves and were met with intrigue but no answers. Superstition says one cannot buy one’s own tarot deck. It must be passed down or bestowed.

Greta Rainbow
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 34
Prelude: A Lump of Pure Sound
Emily Skillings
Poetry, Issue 34
Prelude: A Lump of Pure Sound
Emily Skillings
Poetry, Issue 34

I read things and they float away. I would rather stare at my own breasts. “Mind like a steel sieve,” my father would say.

Emily Skillings
Poetry, Issue 34
The Way Out Is Through
Jim Whiteside
Poetry, Issue 34
The Way Out Is Through
Jim Whiteside
Poetry, Issue 34

I pass trucks carrying oil, milk, a load of onions (mostly) covered by a tarp. You’re hot, he says.

Jim Whiteside
Poetry, Issue 34
Photographs from Syria and Palestine
Samar Abu Elouf, Ameen Abo Kaseem, and Maen Hammad
Art, Issue 34
Photographs from Syria and Palestine
Samar Abu Elouf, Ameen Abo Kaseem, and Maen Hammad
Art, Issue 34

Photographs from Syria and Palestine.

Samar Abu Elouf, Ameen Abo Kaseem, and Maen Hammad
Art, Issue 34
Bolaji Badejo
Kami Enzie
Poetry, Issue 34
Bolaji Badejo
Kami Enzie
Poetry, Issue 34

I put on my suit every day for work.
It takes three hours.

Kami Enzie
Poetry, Issue 34

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