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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

by The Lamp of Diogenes 1. On an old hand me down iPhone with the broken microphone, on which a call is a one way broadcast with the possibility of conversation broken from the start. This not-phone is in Bang Na, Krung Thep, an other city of Angels. When the mid-day thermometer reads 39 degrees… [Read More]

by Shipra Agarwal     I ask the taxi driver to drop me outside the neighborhood. A Maruti WagonR parked in front of the house will draw too much attention. “Go have tea or something, but be here in exactly forty-five minutes,” I tell him, as I wrap a brown stole around my shoulders and… [Read More]

by Nicole Zhao As I walk down the streets in parts of Manhattan or Brooklyn, the coupling of white men and Asian women is prevalent. They span the age range: from hipster millennials decorated in tattoos to elderly couples in periwinkle shorts and argyle cardigans.  I size them up with both disdain and curiosity—even though… [Read More]

by Ashmita Malkani     Taipei. 2018. When I arrived, Radha Auntie poured two glasses of red wine. We sat, sipping, at the small dining room table. Beside us, the entryway to the kitchen, and the living room behind. Her small painting room opened with two sliding doors. A canvas perched on an easel, and… [Read More]

by Jen Soong     The moon is half-full and you are packing the only suitcase you own. Well, it’s your Ma’s but she doesn’t know. The exterior is robin’s egg blue with a hard shell and hairline white cracks zigzagging like lightning. Your neck cranes towards the soft blue interior pockets and you inhale… [Read More]

by Melisa Gregorio       It began on Christmas Eve morning with wisps of chocolate above my wife’s lips. I had just stretched the sleep from my limbs when I noticed her new brown moustache. “You didn’t share your midnight snack with me,” I said. I kissed and licked along her lips until the… [Read More]