Issue 42

Issue 42, Poetry

Self Portrait where lilies are my body and you’re playing me like chess

March 20, 2026 /
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image curtesy of the MET Museum Archive
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by Sophie Jefferies

I am a selfish girl to tell you the truth.
My blood flows inside my own body and nowhere else.
I am an indulgent gash on my left finger.
I am a Victorian maiden, seeping into the walls.

My blood flows inside my own body and nowhere else.
I am a chess pawn covered in lily pollen.
I am a Victorian maiden, seeping into the walls.
My white nightgown slips sexily off my shoulder.
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Issue 42, Poetry

MOONFLOWER

March 20, 2026 /
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image curtesy of The MET Museum Archives
```
by Lydia Downey

There was a perpetual
            residue on our hands.
                        Steamed milk stuck like tar

as my friend and I scrubbed
            down each closing shift
                        and stole our dinners

of half-stale, chipped pastries.
            We gave up trying
                        to leave early

and walked the long path
            to our apartment
                        somewhere

after ten, when only pheasants
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Issue 42, Poetry

The Snow, Slant Ghazal for Winter of 2085

March 20, 2026 /
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image curtesy of The MET Museum Archives
```
by Linette Marie Allen

The snow, a canvas for branch-sprawl, brittle lines—

a quaking aria breaks them, shivering their bridal lines.

The year grows its teeth, gnashing at our stooped gardens,

gesturing the leaves we swore could defy bridal lines.

Newsprint burns in the hearth, its stories curling to ash,
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Cecilia Gallerani

March 20, 2026 /

image curtesy The National Museum in Krakow

by Martina Clavadetscher, translated from the German by Melody Winkle

Two gifts

Enough! That's enough looking!
Sometimes what I most want to scream into the dimmed hall, across the parquet floor, and straight into their young faces:
It’s too late for you to see me alive!
Even though at their receptions and tours, they’re always eager to agree—yes, yes, how true, indeed:
This woman alone is enough to grasp what nature is, what art is.

Hybrid, Issue 42

The Peng Paradox

March 20, 2026 /
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photo by Charles March III
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by Yutong Li

Far in the northern darkness there is a fish called Kun, which transforms into a bird called Peng. Riding the whirlwind, it soars ninety thousand li into the sky.

— Zhuangzi, “Free and Easy Wandering” (adapted)

Initial Condition

There is a Peng, riding the whirlwind ninety thousand li into the sky. It flies so high that both the blue heavens above and the earth below are obscured by clouds, making it impossible to distinguish where the sky ends and earth begins.
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Hybrid, Issue 42

Birthday Pie

March 20, 2026 /
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image curtesy of the Public Domain Review
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by Josie Braaten

Rain wasn’t in the forecast for my tenth birthday. I spent the morning walking from room to room—telling myself that by the next window, it would have stopped. It was a Saturday. A lucky day for a birthday. After lunch, I walked the dog.

We walked through the downpour that, magically, refused to stop. I ducked my head between the macrame gray glass of it & pushed down the dog’s. I steered us around puddles, brushed water off mailbox tops,
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