by Yaccaira Salvatierra In most cities, you can hear us at night. Our bodies, without our shadows, cannot be seen. Our skateboards tremble & staccato on concrete & asphalt. You can hear the cadence of searching. We move beneath security cameras. There are a lot of eyes looking for us. Paranoia has set its eyes… [Read More]
Witness Magazine
Ida the Storm
by Ian U. Lockaby with Jean Valentine and Poochie Lee C. on the porch through the veil of green rain, its careen off the bayou beyond her as she speaks with Tony, out of sight—in the soft reek of swamp-swallowed figs—from where I stand, in the dark kitchen, and to where the blackout has travelled… [Read More]
Children
by Robert Osborne Martin, the neighborhood black cat, was originally named Sambo. Nelson knows this because some of the younger kids still call the cat by that name. They yell in the street under a late March sun. If Nelson is around inspecting his gutters, or scouting out locations on his property for the new… [Read More]
After Diagnosis // Act III
by Morgan Hamill this is not // what I’d hoped // for a sudden lack of limb feet hot, thick // in a summer basement // play about a girl time-traveling during // her own mastectomy just prior // to her time of death. // This is not // what she’d planned for, this //… [Read More]
Losses of a Pandemic: To My Garden that I Let Die
by Ashleigh Albrechtsen When COVID-19 barreled to Utah in March of 2020, the material experience of my body and its response to the outside world transformed. Though I remained safe in my home, the anxiety I experienced felt nonetheless like I was hooked to an intravenous tube that coursed icy currents through my capillaries. Maintaining… [Read More]
The Living Ghost Is on the Street
by Ismael Santallines The moment I say you are beautiful you begin to fade more and more of you vanishes more of your chafing beauty draws you with it away from the reflective tissue of what we choose to see diaphanous image back to the purity of base elements like a wind that does… [Read More]
God Does Everything
by Chris Crowder My God, we’re too dark for a rainbow. You cower behind creation. Clouds like anvils. Nothing happens for a reason. Let me show you how everything feels. Your angels’ cheeks are too elastic. The side of a couch. I want my knuckles, your face. In the reverse, I am drowning. When… [Read More]
Folly Cove
by Spencer Wise In Rockport, my mother and I were digging for littlenecks in the mudflats while her nosy boyfriend, Howie the dentist, watched from a picnic table high up on the granite bluff. We’d gone to the Lobster Trap for dinner, a famous cedar-shingle seafood shack along the coast, but of course my mother… [Read More]
El pan de cada día
by Thomas Maya She doesn’t want to tell you her story. This is easy to notice, especially with her hesitation and unease: She shakes her head from side to side as her gaze lowers to the floor. She fidgets with her fingers, her hands. She holds one in the other as if tending to an… [Read More]
Little Lost Ones, Over Hillsides
by Henry Christopher why does she dream? On a certain morning, the three billy goats Gruff were on their way to a distant hillside, where the grass was especially tall, and green, and tender. She asks, “Why three billies on a hill?” Soon, she’s asking more, losing traction on the switchback glissades of her developing… [Read More]
Editor’s Note on This Issue
Vol. XXXV No. 3 – Winter 2022 It grows increasingly difficult to pen an editor’s note without mentioning the pandemic. The reason this time, however, is difficult to parse out. While the pandemic remains a mortal threat, following the world’s reopening, numerous issues have arisen that rival the urgency of the virus we have learned… [Read More]
Friday Prayer
by Nadeem Zaman There were the mosques up and down Devon Avenue and its side-streets, and there was the Muslim Community Center at Elston and Pulaski. We started there and went on to visit ten other mosques—and by visit I mean walking in, my father eyeballing the lobby, grumbling to himself that the… [Read More]