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Issue No. 35: Recognition

Fall / Winter 2025

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Recognize yourself: in “Metamorphosis,” Edidiong Uzoma Essien’s subversion of the Kafkian trope that takes on sex work, fantasy, and capitalism; in John Weir’s “Starting from Paumanok,” an ode to lost love in New York at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic; and in first-time author Kate Jeffrey’s “Pickles,” which paces through a startling series of reincarnations in the life of a hamster purchased on Craigslist.

Unlocked Pieces

Features
Ulysses (Crossword)
Marianne Huntington
Art, Issue 35
Ulysses (Crossword)
Marianne Huntington
Art, Issue 35

Play our James Joyce-themed crossword and check your answers if you get stuck!

Marianne Huntington
Art, Issue 35
Fertile
Julia Oschwald Tilton
Nonfiction, Issue 35
Fertile
Julia Oschwald Tilton
Nonfiction, Issue 35

You can only suffocate so many embryos with your own blood vessels before you start to believe in your bones that this is what you’re meant to do, what you deserve.

Julia Oschwald Tilton
Nonfiction, Issue 35
Fat Check
Lee Relvas
Fiction, Issue 35
Fat Check
Lee Relvas
Fiction, Issue 35

In an uncategorizable dream, she was in a doctor’s office. The doctor had dyed black hair and didn’t use gloves for the pelvic examination. The room was full of rotting food. Then she was home and opening an envelope, and inside the envelope was a check for $100,000. 

Lee Relvas
Fiction, Issue 35
City Councilors Table the Ceasefire Resolution
Lauren Jappe
Poetry, Issue 35
City Councilors Table the Ceasefire Resolution
Lauren Jappe
Poetry, Issue 35

Look how the sidewalk rises to meet your feet

with the gentleness of mothers. The splendor

of spring trees in fuchsia bloom is yours alone.

Lauren Jappe
Poetry, Issue 35
Capped
Jeffery Renard Allen
Fiction, Issue 35
Capped
Jeffery Renard Allen
Fiction, Issue 35

Out in the field Mbye saw somebody just barely there, a shirtless old man, as black as Mbye, with his trousers rolled up, who looked at him without curiosity.

Jeffery Renard Allen
Fiction, Issue 35
Metamorphosis
Edidiong Uzoma Essien
Fiction, Issue 35
Metamorphosis
Edidiong Uzoma Essien
Fiction, Issue 35

There is some pain, but there always is, needles weaving in and out of the changing tissue and skin. This pain is bearable, at least. Just a nose, completely superficial. My nose is her nose, thirty seconds later.

Edidiong Uzoma Essien
Fiction, Issue 35
Florida Story
Joanna Hershon
Fiction, Issue 35
Florida Story
Joanna Hershon
Fiction, Issue 35

I took a deep breath, which did absolutely nothing, and stormed out of the bathroom. Then I made a beeline for the mirrored triangle bar and ordered myself a Long Island iced tea. No one here cared how old I was.

Joanna Hershon
Fiction, Issue 35
“Bloody Murder” & “Looking at Rubenstein”
Edmund White
Poetry, Issue 35
“Bloody Murder” & “Looking at Rubenstein”
Edmund White
Poetry, Issue 35

I like the look of old, liver-spotted hands
Playing Rachmaninov with complete agility
Pounding out the chords or whispering the pianissimi

Edmund White
Poetry, Issue 35
Cowboys
Jonathan Fletcher
Poetry, Issue 35
Cowboys
Jonathan Fletcher
Poetry, Issue 35

Because I was brown
they cocked their thumbs
aimed pasty forefingers
at me while they shouted
‍ ‍ Take that, Geronimo!

Jonathan Fletcher
Poetry, Issue 35
Shovel People
Asya Graf
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 35
Shovel People
Asya Graf
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 35

It’s as easy as it sounds in my grandparents’ letters to live a normal life under an authoritarian regime. You love or fall out of love, you go on summer adventures, defend a dissertation. The trains keep running, cows keep giving milk.

Asya Graf
Essay, Nonfiction, Issue 35

Masthead

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Table of Contents

* Breakout Prize winner

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