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]
Witness Magazine
Where Are You From?
by Cynthia Landesberg My sons and I amble down the sidewalk, soaking in the sun. My six-year-old son’s hand rests securely in mine, fingers comfortable, grip easy. My three-year-old son’s hand feels foreign to me, cool and awkward. I am hyper-aware of every shift of a finger, every change in pressure, like holding hands… [Read More]
Vol. XXXV No. 2 – Saṃsāra: the Asian Voices Issue
Editors’ Note: When we first launched this call, all we knew was that we wanted to create a special Witness prose issue that featured Asian voices from all across the globe. We could never have expected the hearteningly exuberant response and the outpouring of community support our call received. The result is Saṃsāra, a collection… [Read More]
Bark of the Mango Tree
by Sara Chansarkar I was born brown, as brown as the bark of the mango tree outside our house. I’d inherited Amma’s features—her round eyes and sharp nose—but not her wheat-colored skin tone. My coloring tinged a shade even darker than Baba’s skin. Perhaps, Amma never needed to apply a dot of kohl on my… [Read More]
A Rickshawwallah in London
by Rahad Abir 1 You land in London with £210 in your pocket. It is the year 2009. You are able to pay the first month’s rent for the room, but not the deposit. You have to share it with an acquaintance from Dhaka. He arrived a week prior. It is a… [Read More]
Vol. XXXV No. 1 – Spring 2022
Editor’s Note: In the ’90s, the “Missed Connections” craigslist advertisement section held a spark of intrigue or, dare we say, romance in the idea that a chance encounter might lead to the possibility of something better. Yes, at times, these ads could be a bit too revealing of our innermost desires, but even at… [Read More]
Beethoven’s Fifth in the Segregated Housing Unit by John Quintero
A young man sang in wild tones from isolation, in operatic moans that filled the cathedral ceilings of bedlam, vocalized feelings: “I’m bored. I’m bored. I’m really fucking bored.” Over. And over. And over. John Quintero was a former member of the workshop before being transferred to another facility. Highly… [Read More]
Three Haiku by Laurence Taaffe
A grove with no practitioners is blown away in winter Early on solstice morning raccoons sleep in the trees but they are not themselves trees Summer’s end when lady bugs attack they bite hard Laurence Taaffe is an artist and poet who has been in the workshop for several years…. [Read More]
China Virus by Jenny Hykes Jiang
I His mother’s voice crackles on NPR. Driving Luke to high school before it stopped we hear her mourn her son, Wen Liang, doctor who first saw what’s now named COVID-19 unattached to place/people we can harm. He had a son, five, a baby coming. I stop listening at five, only hear her putonghua— common… [Read More]
letter to a drowned poet by Jieyan Wang
Qu Yuan (340-278 BCE): an ancient Chinese poet, drowned himself in the Miluo River after the capture of his country’s capital. in summer, your country falls & you’re left with nothing but koi fish & sunlit insomnia miluo: the quietest tributary, the off-cut you cast yourself into, ripples expanding into rhymes one day… [Read More]
Goodbye to Mr. Wonderfull 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 forward, squinting,… [Read More]
Mrs. Nixon’s Third Grade by Ismael “Izzy” Santillanes
The wooden ruler with the brass edge is treason upon his brown arm and not until a week after you’d used it on the back of my hand did I hear the air hiss rip through to weal the skin of my childhood friend as Mexican hieroglyphs pulverized against the back of my teeth cringed… [Read More]
