Category: VOLUME V

Suffocating Nature, Camelia Rojas     My grandmother planted herself here among the arrowheads. She dug her husband out of the marsh— hands cupped as she washed him. They turned metal siding into brick. Within the lilies, she told me to let the earth stain my knees black like the grease of my grandfather’s plumbing hands.…

A New World of Light, Jacob Fisher     We went to an amusement park in downtown Calcutta, with fire-breathing macho men and an artist who wrote my name on a single grain of uncooked rice. There was a water slide with mats made of golfing turf, and no soft landing to break the fall. My…

A Meal of Crayons, Bryan Rubin   My first art teacher was my uncle who was a boy. He, at fourteen, took my seven-year-old drawings of long-haired mermaids and flowers and handed me the backside of one of his exam papers, with red ink splattered on the surface. He then centered a chair in the room…

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Morgan Granosk     Far above our paper houses, God spilled milk into the sky. Smeared clouds to make curd sunsets. Beautified that chalky orange against the white street lamps, as if to mimic a paradise, as if to say, “Never leave.” The candy dust from our pixie…

Persephone, Esther Tang     When I think about 1945, I think about peaches. Sweet and fuzzy with a fat, brown pit smack in the center. I remember biting into a fresh May peach from the backyard when my mother ran into the kitchen yelling the war was over.   I was twelve. Mother hugged Aunt…