virginia

virginia   i have met virginia. she has sobbed drunk in my lap at 3:53 AM on a rainy august morning her tears rolling down my bones, her trembling mouth cool on my skin. pronounce she-nan-doah. it means ‘daughter of the stars.’ virginia, your pickup truck broke down night came, and it reached its charcoal […]

my grandmothers thirteen bowls

“my grandmother’s thirteen bowls” my grandmother’s thirteen bowls had all come from Vietnam, round pale and dusty like her. thirteen hollow half-moons that hadn’t been full in years; her mother’s and father’s swam with dragons and fairies, while mountains stirred dumpling-shaped clouds for first brother and his wife, lotuses mingled with cranes for her three […]

Paper Cranes

Paper Cranes Jenna Bryant   He spills words onto creamy cellulose sheets squeezing them in the spaces between thin blue veins, uniformly stacked, marred by coffee stains and poor penmanship corners curling, edges torn, a roadmap of wrinkles on parchment skin his pen scratches tributaries of ink outside the lines swirling eddies of ideas that […]

Palladio’s Vitrium

Palladio’s Vitrium Olivia Vande Woude   Through the Palladian window, one can watch her spread butter on wheat toast then carefully sprinkle cinnamon sugar across it evenly, releasing granules from between smooth fingers her hija’s breakfast favorite. At Saturday markets, she stands over the fryer folding meats, onion, and vegetables into corn masa. Carefully folding […]

Gospels

Gospels Logan Pritchard The mirror on my bookshelf is angled so that, if I don’t stand just in front of it, I’ll never see more than the ceiling. I don’t know Why I tilted it like that, only that I like the way it shines when The light casts over it. I used to have […]

City People

Photograph by Glen Walker City People Perri Nelson we were city people that much had always been clear on her eighteenth birthday my mother had packed her suitcase slammed it shut with a crash that never stopped echoing in the memories of her family the ones who had never thought of leaving she took the […]

Small Means Fragile

Photograph by Leela Ghaemmaghami Small Means Fragile Madeline Mitchem When you’re small like me you’re told what you can and can’t do you can’t fight or be intimidating, you can’t lift anything more than 10 pounds. But you can sit there quietly. They assume you’re as fragile as a vase. If you fall you’ll break… […]

Growing Pains

Photograph by Sydney Nicholson Growing Pains Kamryn Crossman The winds become a wolf’s cry and sirens screech echoing through the barren town that hides down beneath the compacted dirt. Dry lightning cracks along a ghastly sky. Her brother’s face soaked with the consumption of trembling fear, while bells are tossed and jerked like a beastly […]

raw journal

Photograph by Georgia Crum raw journal Julia Lindemann one. i knew i did not stand a chance (from the very moment i met you) two. you caught me at a point in my life where my shadow was complaining about never following joy (my most exuberant of emotions were shoved away in the dustiest corners […]

Faultlines

Faultline Marie Ungar I. “Ma’am, your son’s been in an accident.”                                                                                         […]