Vol. XXXIV No. 2 – Winter 2021 In the depths of the pandemic, we have had to reimagine much. We have had to consider our habits and behaviors in both close quarters as well as across new mediums. We have had to examine the fabric of our social structures and relationships. We have had to… [Read More]

A Note on This Issue   Poetry Hadara Bar-Nadav, Touchless Entry* Nancy Chen Long, Orbit Jose Hernandez Diaz, The Golden Telescope* Jennifer H. Dracos-Tice, On Learning Your Birth Mother Might Have Watched You Swing* Jenny Hykes Jiang, China Virus* Edward Mayes, Nor Any Know I Know the Art and ‘Tis News As Null As Nothing… [Read More]

by Jade Hidle You’ve always been asked-told you are “Mỹ lai,” meaning American, meaning white. You’ve always been halved.  Even though we share the same body, you won’t remember me. Because we became unrecognizable to each other. For what felt like an endless period of time, despite the fact that, by the calendar, it was… [Read More]

by Mee Ok Icaro After wading through the Seoulite crowds with their iPhone screens blazing tiny future K-pop stars into the night, Dee and I hit up a convenient store for snacks and beer before settling onto a bench in one of the many hangout areas. There was something so relaxed about my newfound friend… [Read More]

by Andi Brown When I return home at night, I’m careful not to kiss my wife. It’s by mutual agreement. It was a routine we had before COVID, when all we had to worry about was MRSA, C-diff, and any human fluids that might get on my scrubs. In lieu of kisses, I strip my… [Read More]

by Robert Brian Mulder My ex-boyfriend’s name is Tripp Pham, but I recently learned that for the past year or so a group of people have been referring to him as Mr. Wonderfull. As in Full of Wonder. When an almost-friend at work showed me the website on her phone in the bathroom, I leaned… [Read More]

by Sean Enfield   The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. —W.E.B. DuBois   Tamir Rice was shot twice within seconds of two cleveland police officers arriving on the scene. He was 12 years old, brandishing an airsoft gun, and guilty of playing while black. He died the following… [Read More]

by Tara Isabel Zambrano Content Warning: miscarriage -someone filled Abba’s, my father’s hookah during the daawat of his recent wedding. When he inhaled, it sounded like the hiss of the wind in the valley, the sound that kept my mother awake at nights, and her guilt of not being able to give him a son…. [Read More]

by Jennifer Lorene Ritenour Her scales are the size of silver dollars. Her green hair mystically covers her breasts. Water drips from her fin and turns into pearls that she strings with the thread of her hair. Her pinky nail is the needle. She sits on a rock in the middle of the night, waiting… [Read More]

by Christopher Linforth Mateo, it is very late. Let me try once more. A few years after the war, I left Hrvatska without a word and started my life again in Norway. Even as I stepped onto the plane, I knew you would be unaware for some time of the circumstances surrounding my abrupt departure…. [Read More]

by Christina Leo A Witness Weekends read: scroll down to watch the author read an excerpt of this story At the tilted pole of a distant planet on the date of the summer solstice, the eyes of a young astronomer reflect the faint glow of a radio-sized machine which measures the countdown to sunrise. This… [Read More]

by Aiden Baker Over the years, my wife developed peculiar habits. The strangest, my favorite, is the way she will, on occasion, scrunch up her face and give birth to fruit. The first time she did it we were at the zoo. We’d spent the day wandering along the gravel paths, pointing at elephants and… [Read More]