the Wasteland (revisited)

By Kimberly Madura She stands in a wasteland of her  own making. Not for lack of water, but because she chooses to remain unquenchable. She desperately needs to be  satiated by this rainstorm, but she has a  fear of rain. Take the water before it is too late, I plead with her, before the fire

Streetlights

By Hameedah Aruwa ‘& isn’t life a tale of streetlights?’ I ponder, as I tread the stony road that leads to home. I swoon in the  balminess of the crispy breeze stroking every inch of my skin– every swoosh compels me to swerve  my slender body, to the wind’s shallowbeats. I deduce that the skies are indifferent:Silent & dark.

Playing with Remy

By Tiffany Shull Peterson

The Late Hour

By Marjie Giffin The Late Hour arrives early it seems and pits meagainst the digital clock face that dares me to defy its logic.Defy it I must, for there are no hoursfor my own doings and yearningsunless I scavenge them from theriff-raff moments of the end of day. I am used to the scraps of life,as

Ways to Lose Me

By Esty Loveing-Downes CW: language Send me three dozen roses to carry around school all day. Make people stare.Pressure me to stay the night and after I leave, fuck the girl you claim is obsessed with you. Blame me.Send a buddy to ask me out. Lay your tongue inside my mouth like a thick, motionless

THE TESTAMENT

By Roseline Mgbodichinma CW: sexual harassment, gaslighting On the night the dark muscular man called me  Rubbed my thighs and teased my back rolls with            His fork-shaped hands, Asking me about numbers and scores on the excel sheet I curled into different frames of myself,  Like how you wonder if the Monalisa is smiling or

Love Poem to My Mother

By DeMaris Gaunt We were alone for a little whilein the bright white hospital roomwith the darkened skypeeking through the window.I wanted to tell you something you didn’t know—something I had forgotten to tell you—so I took your hand, soft, heavy with dying, into mine—asked you to remember all those nights you read to me at bedtimefrom the

The Bisexual Girl You See in Movies is Truly Bisexual and Nothing Else

By Halle Preneta The bi girl you see in movies is truly bisexual. She isn’t straight. She isn’t gay. She’s bisexual. Period. End of story. She finds the guy  in the back of the classroom with trimmed short brown hair that swoops over this forehead  and that sly smile he gets when one of his

reformed.

By Charlotte Reed “Let’s see what we can do.” i am made of clay. My body is lifeless, on the cold slab of a table.  I wish it was formless in this moment of observation. He stands over me, a surgical mask on, eyes dark. He stretches out my fingers, makes them long and lanky,

destined repetition

By Gabrielle Hamel TW: Sexual assault a young woman, frail and fragile, presses her palms into the frame of a vanityvanity – to love oneself or to lose oneself? if she is not her own, whose is she?she inhales sharply.  a stranger tugs intently at the back of a corset designed to minimize – to