Poem by Vidushy Avasthi Art by J. Sassi I weave my memory of people from threads they leave behind. The gas station next to their bus stop, silent car rides after driving tests, rum and cokes and gin and tonics. All the little things, everything we ever laughed and fought about, tucked in a pattern
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Bad Gateway
Poem by Spencer Lee Art by J. Sassi I’m malfunctioning at the pool with my kindergarten ex-girlfriend listening to the humdrum whir of the air conditioner. She has a brother I’ve seen on Grindr; she gets me, I’ve assumed. We’re discussing the merits of Uber fees over DUI charges and all the tall
This is not an apology it is a confession
Poem by Lorelei McEwen Art by Alex Hoang You were not divine. You were soft and brittle. You hurt gently.
The Trees on my Father’s Hands
Poem by Corrina Wang Art by Amy Ng Warning: The following poems contain topics on death. Disclaimer: I do not promote or support any self-harm, obsession, drugs, extremely strict parenting, or anything that will cause pain to people. Poems are taken from inspiration through historical texts, images, and random thinking. Please seek professional support if
Rejecting rotting humanness: The ecofeminist abject in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
Essay by Emily Mao Art by Natalia Mohar Han Kang’s The Vegetarian uncovers the grotesque and poignant truths of gendered violence and resistance. The story follows Yeong-hye, a Korean housewife who embarks on a journey departing from a patriarchal, hierarchical, and humancentric rendering of humanness that seeks to erase female subjectivity. As she resorts to
“I” to Eye: Inclined Subjectivity and Feminine Vision in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
Essay by Anna Pontin Art by Alex Hoang In 1928, one year after the publication of To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf wrote and delivered a series of feminist lectures that would become her most famous work. Later published as A Room of One’s Own, her essay on “Women and the Novel” closes with a biting
Asia Ex Machina
Essay by Avery Man Art by Adri Marcano In her revolutionary feminist essay A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, Donna Haraway posits the political myth of the cyborg whose hybridity of machine and organism, and of reality and fiction, blurs the functions of “mind, body, and tool” (165). Adopting
Three bodies. Decomponsed, Mutilated beyond recognition.
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
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