Issue Archive

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Watching Chinese immigrants shouting curt orders to Black workers in their newly learned English was often like observing a failed game of telephone, as the workers’ faces bore quiet offense.

“Two girls among the green, between trees. Hands on hips, heads tipped back, eyes searching sky. Six years before Taylor Swift announced her eighth studio album by posting a photo of herself standing in a forest, she posted another photo of a forest holding two women, which she has since deleted from her grid. Don’t stress, it’s not gone. It’s just entered the next stage in the celebrity Instagram life cycle, which means that it’s truly ours now, property of the stans with the prescience to preserve.”

“the kingdom comes like a joke / told by a child, littered with /
what do you get and what happens now / and how many how many how many / like a game / of lost and found”

“you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf

& remember my posture, the way blossoms become

one last thing.”

“In the spring of 2020, when the lockdown began, Liz still owned the ax that broke down her childhood front door…”

“under house lights you move / through hallways backstage like it’s a sin / to inhabit your own skin”

“I am a God fearing man / depending on who asks / But between you and me / God does not exist”