"I like dahlias," I told him. "Red.
Big bloody flowers on my bedside table
Like organs in a jar."
Sammy Aiko
Image: Moths, Noor Rekhi (Fall 2023)
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“a vase is beautiful, painted, / bursting with life and the stems shoved down its throat…”
Reema Saleh
Image: Carolyn Hammond, 蜻蜓 (Spring 2019)
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“…The water, still cold from springtime, washes over her toes. A breeze pulls strings of dark hair from her updo and blows them in every direction. But she’s not annoyed by it: the wind is free, just like he had said. Yako tucks the strands back behind her ears and peeks over her shoulder.…”
Anna Moise
Image: Perri Wilson, Waders (Spring 2019)
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“I witnessed the eater of exotic cheese, / the drinker of priceless wine, the man / of modern appetite adorned in jewels…”
Matthew James Hodgson
Image: Tatiana Goderstad, Pryce over Denver (Spring 2017)
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“…I got some tea and lemon and went to my station at checkout line 2. It was different. There was a plexiglass cage around me. I had to move one side to get in.… I kept breathing the same air through my mask and also through the plexiglass cage. It tasted stale.…”
Renee Kenny
Image: Frankie Fung, Fall (Spring 2017)
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“shredded from days the pastures / and cornfields and tending to sheep / you’ve landed in a big city…”
Rachel Wan
Image: Charlie Lewis, Leaking (Spring 2019)
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“The tree outside my window and my father are both balding….”
Claire Levin
Image: Luke Ehlers, Vastness (Winter 2018)
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“The left side of a decapitated unicorn lay / prostrate in my bowl between all of the grain.”
Claire Levin
Image: Dasha, Russian Blues #4 (Spring 2019)
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“meanwhile the wolves take their tea by candlelight, golden before the world knew the Polaroid, when birds / fell from the sky in the exact places where skyscrapers would someday be.”
Sammy Aiko
Image: Shivraj Grewal, Lamp Post (Spring 2017)
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“A philodendron sat on his windowsill, exploding green leaves and vines halfway to the floor, like a tired firework. He didn’t have much furniture, or anything, really. I left my coat and bag on the hardwood floor. My shoes were already off.”
Henry Hua
Image: Grace Hauck, Blurry Lines (Spring 2017)
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“I am the dogbirth tree with deep, twisted roots and thick skinned leaves that make sounds when you bite into them. I bit them often as a child in the years before the fruit bloomed, a ritual enacted in both sweet curiosity and feral greed.”
Jerusha Crone
Image: Charlie Lewis, Hunger: Crushed (Fall 2018)
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“Fall descended on campus like a cold dream and I felt like I was losing myself in the transition.”
Chandler James
Image: Victoria Constant, Washington Park (Winter 2018)
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“We sit and soak in rain. / Below us, the city spreads, / a sea-locked soggy legoland.”
Alia Shahzad
Image: Emma Smith, Fire (Winter 2018)
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“All the love that can’t be returned / has pooled to level.”
Marco Harnam Kaisth
Image: Jessica Hwang, Fishermen by the Discoveries Monument, where the Tagus flows into the Atlantic (Winter 2018)
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“and when it is July / and we are trying to get to Riis Beach by counting train cars / at Utica Avenue so we can all get on in the same place / and somehow, we are all there because of you…”
Sofiy Inck
Image: Geoffrey Baring, On a Wire (Spring 2019)
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“I fell in love with you because you take ants outside. / The first time you were deep in a crouch on the kitchen floor…”
Claire Levin
Image: Nathaniel Bolter, Cold Spring Park (Spring 2019)
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“Before the bright, little worms get to dance in the corners of your vision, / and before the tinny flute gets to whistle just outside your head…”
Sofiy Inck
Image: Jessica Xia, Restless (Winter 2020)
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“We all lived a halflife in the bodies of our mothers. / She carried a whole half of you before you arrived.”
Sofiy Inck
Image: Amelia Frank, Native (Winter 2018)
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“Flags throwing haymakers/ at a salt flat sky/ Streets pachinkoed by people and/ siren heat…”
Miles Mikofsky
Image: Andrea Tábora, Fog (Spring 2019)
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“Girl sees godly bodies drifting/chit peng,/har peng /asks if they’ll fetch her back to Penang,/where she might eat the haram meat/in the wonton mee, no questions asked…”
Alia Ai-Ming Tehzeeb Shahzad
Image: Víctor Almaraz Argueta, Eckhart Hall, May, 2019
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