“a vase is beautiful, painted, / bursting with life and the stems shoved down its throat…”

Reema Saleh

Image: Carolyn Hammond, 蜻蜓 (Spring 2019)

“…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)

“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)

“…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)

“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)

“The tree outside my window and my father are both balding….”

Claire Levin

Image: Luke Ehlers, Vastness (Winter 2018)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“We sit and soak in rain. / Below us, the city spreads, / a sea-locked soggy legoland.”

Alia Shahzad

Image: Emma Smith, Fire (Winter 2018)

“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)

“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)