• Masthead
  • ISSUES
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Archives

Plain China

National Anthology of the Best Undergraduate Writing

Fiction, Volume XI

In Memory of Atlas Moon

Marisa Barnard

Fiction, Volume XI

Swimming Lessons

Claire Doll

Poetry, Volume XI

Oceanic Oracle

Summer Hagan

Poetry, Volume XI

American

Juan Ortega

Poetry, Volume XI

Orare por ti (I will pray for you)

Juan Ortega

Poetry, Volume XI

Staring at My Bookshelf

Angela Vodola

Fiction, Volume XI

Red Snow

Hobson Wadsworth

  • VOLUME I

    José

    Through the Stones, Ian Dolton-Thornton   The office space is cheap because it is the hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom at the San Francisco Tenant’s Union. I suspect that…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Bookshelves, Boxes

    Rocks, Sara Sisun   I’ve done enough packing to know that some things are easier to pack than others. Like books. I always pack my entire bookshelf in watery-brown, foursquare boxes,…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    The City That Care Forgot

    Kangding Cigarette Man, Jeremy Nelson   New Orleans: blues crackin’, hip swinging, finger-sucking, muckraking, turn the body into a song hot sweaty push you up against a wall humidity breathing onto…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    The Rejection of the Regionalists

    Plaid Sweater (1931) and Cape Coat (1982) by Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth   In Andrew Wyeth’s winter landscapes, Pennsylvania seems to groom itself with a cold gray tongue. Down it sweeps, over wide…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    How to Smoke a Cigarette

    Couch, Mirra Schwartz   Stay up until five in the morning, having your heart broken from nine time zones away. Discover new and exciting forms of pain. Feel like you’ve had…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Folktale

    The Labyrinth, Beth Carolyn Callaway [Trigger Warning: Death Mention; Depictions of Animal Death] Arcadia An orange glow around a corner—sometimes a Christmas tree in a darkened room by a bookcase and…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Double-Wedding Ring

    Xinnian Kuaile, Patrick Depuydt [Trigger Warning: Depictions Of Mild Gore] Don’t ask me nothing about nothing, I might just tell you the truth.Remember how they took her bloody clothes out of…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    The Bones That Build Your Back

    Chapel in Winter, Jenny Brum     In maps, I look for you, In myth, in frames, but mirrors— I can watch you quietly, a subtle glance, then wayward fall against…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Odysseus

    Untitled, Liz Melsheimer     Sometimes in the evening when he walked along the beach he would fill his bucket with shells and break them into pieces with his feet, thinking…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Hikage no Hana

    Bridge, Cory Gans     Some years past, her hair, cold like ice, soft like feathers, brushed past my poor hand.       About the Author Daniel Chevalier, California State…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Catching the Eclipse

    Untitled, Mae Ryan     He talks of Relativity but half of Freundlich’s team is taken prisoner. The rest of us are left to gaze at the gray, condensing lid descending;…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Phantasmagoria

    It’s The Simple Things, Allison McKenzie     Again the squid that swallows light has no shadow. It flickers in and out of sight in the inexorably slow click of a…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Brittany Road

    From a Lighthouse, Zach Russo [Trigger Warning: Child Death Mention/Death Mention] Her little house smells like sulfur. Inside, it glows yellow, a combination of southern sun and outdated light fixtures. Her…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Goddess

    Drum Heads, Kalen Keir     When you buried me in the sand, I lost my legs beneath the earth; forgot my limbs. You stooped to my ear, said You’re done: and…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Estonia

    Untitled, Lauren Harris   I First, Stalin burned the forests. Next, planted hemlocks in mathematical rows so no one could hide in the woods, sap running down the legs of the…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Sofia

    Maroc, Asia Suler     See          something nameless                 comes riding                 down the limestone      …

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Anne is Elvis

    Trail of Shoes, Tina Horton     The rehearsal dinner is at the Red Top Restaurant. We sit at three tables they had pushed together. Each place already has an ice…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Lander

    America At War, Coloring Book, 1943, Broc Blegen       I‘ve been to the moon, and now they want to take away my office. “I need it,” I say. “Be…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Ghosts of Little Girls

    Untitled, Tess Vinnedge Trigger Warning: Depictions of  Sexual Coercion of a Minor/Sexual Assault; Fatphobia] My sister stands in the backyard and looks at the bleach-blonde sky of the morning with her…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Max

    Bicycle Gesture Drawing, James K. MacWhirter       She was rubbing ice on herself, and that was entertaining, but when she leaned over and started rubbing ice on me—that was it,…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    How Things Work

    Nothing’s Gonna Happen Without Warning, Chris Winterbauer     Last night Fausto broke open a light bulb at home to see its innards. He held the precious thing by its screwy…

    0 July 31, 2018
  • VOLUME I

    Year Six, Month Seven, Day Twenty-Four

    Troy, Eyla Cuenca     I dream of the desert often. I have never been to a desert before. The one in my dream is flat and purely tan. There is nothing…

    0 July 31, 2018
Older Posts →
← Newer Posts

@2018 plainchina

Go to top