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Mundane Things That Immediately Make Me Think of a Specific Dead Person washing my hair over the edge of the bath • orange squash • doing the crossword • unscrewing / emptying / refilling a hot water bottle • stripping the bed & putting on fresh covers • rope • inspecting my scalp for grey hairs • snow • poaching eggs • denim […]

i wake in a different body being less than i was emptied out through the bloody keyhole my old home / my new home the same / not the same i dis/solve wide shingle skies / speckled walkways where charcoal-crushed violets fizzle black silt flaking / spiky connective tissue books shelved / dust heavy / […]

sext  the story goes that when they spied the kraken’s head sailors set off home-made flares for the fleet on the horizon legend has it that when he had abandoned ship and the captain washed up far from home he lit beacons every night for the shadows of passing ships coffee, sandwich a buzz in […]

Start Here, Find Yourself There  “Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.” —Poincaré There is a darkness, you know, this darkness, I think, have seen and sat through it  before, been taught its ways— been tempted but never mind that, we swivel our hearts  towards fallen snow, birds in […]

Goblin hymn  Goblin God Puzzle-Grass God God of babies born with Jaundice and kept their first days in a box with blue light. God of nauseous newborns still reeling from previous incarnations, who lift their heads too early and make the nurse cross herself and slam the door behind her. Spleen God Picking at your […]

Monique Quintana is from Fresno, CA, and the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019) and the chapbook My Favorite Sancho and Other Fairy Tales (Sword and Kettle Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in Pank, Wildness, Winter Tangerine, Cheap Pop, Okay Donkey, and other publications. You can find her book reviews and artist interviews at Luna […]

Maxwell Suzuki is a Japanese American writer and artist who has recently graduated from USC. He is currently writing a novel on the generational disconnect of Japanese American immigrants and their children. Some of his other work can be found at Young Ravens Literary Review and www.lindenandbuckskin.com.

Fuck Principles. Loyalty. Is the worst idea I’ve ever been proud of. Loyalty  Is chink in every plate of my armor. I’d love to tell you That’s worth it.  I just can’t. Less a choice, or a culture more a force, like a thunderstorm Like typhoon, like this sea  will fucking swallow you                    little tugboat. […]

For the young boy,whose ice cream fell off the cone,they bear down like a monsoon rain,dribble effortlessly down smooth, frictionless cheeks. All of them light as feathers. For the single mother,coming home to this crying boy,they are boulders, caked into the cliffside,infused with grease and sweat,held back only by the knowledge of the damage they […]

Under the Sea                                                                                                 I.  I want to be where the mermaids are down where it’s better,  down where there’s harmony, where they love all the species of the seas. down where it’s better,  down where sharks are sharks and not men in suits disguising their lust for blood.  down where it’s better,  down where mankind’s […]