art by LEGEND BARD

by Adam Day

With lines from Philip Levine’s “Angel Butcher” 

Joined by friends from Musayyib, we wandered down narrow lanes through which a union strike had rushed earlier that evening, to Hanh Men’ Panjshir, a cozy restaurant known for its steaks. Today, the dark, stone dining room was crowded, so while we waited outside for a table, a blind man regaled us with a snippet of a quaint folk song: “Man, shed thy clothes, cover thy head with ashes, run in the street and dance in thy madness…” Then,

art by Jacelyn Yap

by Cameron MacKenzie

When we were pregnant with our first child, my ex-wife and I began to dig back into our family history in the hopes of clarifying the medical record. How prevalent were cancers and which ones were manifest? Who died of heart disease or a blood disorder? Were there any birth defects?

It was a strange process for many reasons, but it principally led me to think, for the first time in a long time, about my uncle. He had what is now called cerebral palsy but,

art by Jacelyn Yap

by Jo Galvv
A Magnetic Kiss, A Jawquake Headline, and the End of Possibility

I stood under the pulsing strobes of the year’s largest LGBT party—a labyrinthine
industrial maze, spanning three floors that vibrated with frenetic energy. I had dragged along
a reluctant fellow student, the only one willing to venture into the scene with me. The crowd
crackled with elation; each nook teemed with strangers in their universes. I couldn’t shake the
hollow ache for connection.

We approached a pair,

sculpture by Tavares Strachan

by Sumitra Mattai

How to use:

• Squeeze a quarter-sized dollop into your palm, and lightly massage into your three-year-old daughter’s Afro as she sits in the bath.
• Hold small sections of her hair at the roots. Gently run through them with a wide tooth comb, like your husband showed you. She doesn’t scream when you do it this way, even as you comb through the more tangled, matted areas.
• When she’s lotioned and dressed in mismatched pajamas of her choosing, sit her down at your feet with a pile of chubby legos.

"Flare" collage by Tiffany Dugan

by Peter Allen

            Since the beginning of term, I had been haunted by a boy at school, a boy with dark hair, pale skin, and features that looked as though they had been cut and polished out of some kind of white marble that had only the faintest tinge of warmth. Not that he wasn’t animated: I often watched him moving quickly across the playing field, or walking, gregarious, laughing with his friends as they headed off campus during a free period, disappearing around the corner of a leafy street while I lingered behind,

"Primarily Black and White" collage by Tiffany Dugan

by Sarah Seybold

In eighth grade, I ached for a leather jacket. The kind the popular people wore. A brown bomber with a world map lining the inside.

I saved for months, nearly a year. Babysitting money from the single mom down the road. Long hours after school, changing her toddler’s poopy diapers and chasing her two little girls whose hands were stinky from Cheez Whiz. Their small, musty house even messier than my own cluttered trailer. Occasional weekend jobs in town for the Air Force major and his wife.