Visual Art by Haylee Kopfensteiner Three bodies. Decomposed. Mutilated beyond recognition. is a creative response to Danny Boyle’s 1995 film Shallow Grave. The painting interprets the relationship between the films main characters: David, Juliet, and Alex to show how their interactions both mimic and subverts the common cultural trope of the erotic triangle. Eve Kosofsky
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A Digital Queer Utopia: Full-Metal Indigiqueer
Essay by Royce Uy Art by Karen Zhang Joshua Whitehead’s poetry collection, Full-Metal Indigiqueer, retells experiences of erotic kinship, internalized trauma, and the haunting against Indigenous peoples to animate a nuanced selfhood of queer Indigeneity: the Indigiqueer. According to Belcourt, discourses of reconciliation are often masculine, silencing queer and feminized voices beneath a dominant focus
Ode to a Recurring Nightmare
Poem by Zoe Shelton Art by Keeley Sieben waking up at regular intervals whether in my own bed or someone else’s— yours even. although it confuses me, when at one moment you are screaming at me for having forgotten to pack our moon shoes because we are leaving for mars within the half-hour, and the
Slowing down and sitting with silence: The limits of graphic witnessing in Footnotes in Gaza
Essay by Tova Gaster Art by Keeley Sieben In 1948, the Zionist military forces destroyed thousands of Palestinian villages, violently and irrevocably fracturing Palestinian society. The Nakba echoes through Palestinian collective memory and contemporary politics through the many displacements which have followed, most of which remain under-reported by Israeli-mediated historical recollection. One such suppressed massacre
Cowboys, Cockroaches, Capital: Reading Rawi Hage’s Cockroach as a Neo-Western
Essay by Tate Kaufman Art by Aiza Bragg The Cowboy exits through a door frame, the faint impression of his spurs imprinting on the desert floor, justice served. The Cockroach slinks through a kitchen drain, smudges of dirt left in place of his scuttling feet, justice wanted. Literature of the American West is armed with
“I wanted to write an endless book of time”: Metanarrative and Mortality in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids
Essay by Sally Elhennawy Art by Haley Cheng While considering the thematic elements that characterize the literary space occupied by HIV/AIDS writing, it is perhaps just as important to take note of the narrative forms utilized by writers in communicating these themes. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was characterized by a pervasive sense of impending mortality; consequently,
Chocolate Almond
Prose by Nina Sky Robertson Art by Amy Ng It is October and Highway 19 is bordered by blackberries and stinging nettle, both past their prime and beginning to decay in the burgeoning winter. We work for Glen, a mill subcontractor, burning slash piles that loggers left last winter. Sometimes the piles are huge, the
Ultra Violet Outlook
Poem by Mark Cameron Art by Haley Cheng We are calling for halfmoon sunburns on the bare backs of teenagers with periods of Magnum bars at sundown. The Entertainer will play on repeat, Serving You Since 2011. Expect an increase in airborne predators. Russian dolls in flight, an iterative dining experience. Darkness will
The Woman’s Voyeur
Poem by Jenna Conradie Art by Amy Ng I am an atheist, yet I find myself Searching for right angles in the clouds Checking to see if that eyelash wish came true Bargaining to popcorn ceilings when I fall short I am an atheist, yet I find myself Preparing to be seen when there’s
Love in Saccharine
Poem by Czarain Laqui Art by Aiza Bragg Feet flat against a dusty floor: a layer of dead skin cells and dog fur — this is Home — but she is empty. Suffocation in all her trinkets whispering maudlin memories; Humid breath, Viscid lips. Kiss her goodbye before brushing your teeth and welcoming morning.
Leftovers
Poetry and art by Cass Minkus 52 percent of kids In the Canadian foster care system Are Indigenous. Personal interest, princesses with pigtails, Trophies collecting dust. He can’t pronounce my name, He refuses to learn, So instead, he just calls me Indian. Prisoners of a system, That had killed our ancestors before. No longer kept
Co-constitutive Crises: Analyzing Rationality and Rhetorical Narratives of Agency in British Columbia’s COVID-19 Pandemic and Opioid Epidemic
Essay by Grace Payne Art by Karen Zhang According to data gathered by the Government of Canada, 3,002 deaths occurred in British Columbia from April 12, 2020 through April 4, 2022, as a result of the COVID-19 virus (bc.thrive.health stats). Meanwhile data released by the BC Coroners Service indicates that at least 2,224 individuals died
the grandmother, the mother, and the future wife
Prose by Samhita Shanker Art by Karen Zhang She holds an empty metal tumbler in one hand and a milk pot in the other, carefully pouring steaming coffee back and forth like a pendulum, pulling higher and higher each time. She knows he likes a thick layer of foam at the top and will complain
Futility and Frustration in Kindred
Essay by Colby Payne Art by Aiza Bragg In Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, protagonist Dana is drawn suddenly into the past, where she must repeatedly save her slave-owning ancestor Rufus to ensure her future survival. In a 1997 interview, Butler stated that her inspiration for Kindred was an interaction with a member of the
new endings.
Poem by Saffah Ibrahimi Art by Haley Cheng She’s sitting across from me, making paper planes out of old homework sheets. She tells me to join her, delicate fingers pressing against the ink of her last sociology final. Did you know we make our first impressions within one-tenth of a second? Did you know I