In 1996, a teenage Black girl disappears from the streets of Queens. Then another. Then a third girl, of Puerto Rican descent, steps into the street and isn’t seen again. The disappearance of these three girls doesn’t stop the world or make...
From Afar (Translated by Siavash Saadlou)
*This piece was translated by Siavash Saadlou Then she fell in love. Out of the blue. In the thick of final exams, when the spring and the peals of adolescence become one, making you feel as if you were constantly teetering along the edge of a...
The Pittsburgh Massacre and its Aftermath: A Witness to the Witnesses
Whenever I’m struggling to enter deeply into the mind of a fictional character, I’ll ask myself: What is it that this character doesn’t want to know about him or herself? What feeling is she keeping at a distance or trying to avoid? Those thoughts...
Three Poems by Jennifer Moxley
One of Everything If Po’ Lightnin’ still be Muse of mine, may he strum a few Orphic chords for my brother Robert, who is soon to be skipping town to avoid his creditors. The Sonoma sunlight, plumper of jammy grapes clutching dusty hillocks, sparer...
An Interview with Ethel Rohan
Ethel Rohan’s newest story collection, In the Event of Contact, is an examination of trauma and its aftermath, of loneliness and a failure to connect. Rohan is an Irish writer living in San Francisco. She is the author of four short story...
from Ceive.
Ceive is a novel in verse that retells the Noah’s Ark story on a container ship. Set in an imagined near-future when extreme weather and gun violence have brought on a collapse of civilization, the book follows the thoughts of a woman named Val as...
Algorithms
1. The pizza delivery man calls me from the parking lot of my apartment, but I don’t know it because I’m watching the tracking app for the pizza preparation, and they haven’t gotten to the oven part yet. I also don’t answer my phone for unknown...
Villanelle neuroptera
A mantisfly sunk in Cretaceous amber displays strong forelegs jabbing for the air. They bristle, seeking to reduce its danger. Observing it we wonder which is stranger, that gone world or our own. Consider, here: a mantisfly sunk in Cretaceous amber...
Allen v Farrow
We don’t know what we want or who we are we don’t even agree we are we In a civilized society, my friend says, preface to: we do not hurt children, we do not fuck children, we define childhood, of course we say we do, and we know we mean...
Three Poems by Joy Arbor
The Poet’s Wife Bil’in Village, West Bank Abu Rani recites a poem, an allegory of figs and leaves he composed on the spot when he couldn’t find the poem we came for. He’s the poet of the village, and we Americans sit on his family’s stone patio...