Page 3 - Issue 159 News Today

I grew up poor, no monogrammed bath towels or duffle bags, nowhere to travel but into myself. My mountain had so many small mountains inside of it, and I had breasts. If I had to give myself any name then, it would have been hunter or whittler or fire with only flint. Of course, I was stronger than I should have been. Strength is the nature of a trans boy huddled over kindling, lighting themselves up, into only ever embers. Sometimes I still feel like a woman, and, really, it’s not so bad if ...

I want to make the body into sky.                                              – Anish Kapoor, on his sculpture Marsyas (2002), Turbine Hall, Tate Modern No, I can’t imagine it–– I, the taut tongue in an unsheltered             mouth dizzy with the earth as it turnsand turns. At least let me be skin. Something beneath skin.

On the fifth day of pills, the limestonestole my eyes. Beneath its scraggle and rasp              my sight burned senseless. No surprise–they must want to cure my beast with more beast.              What could see me like this but the monster of me? By morning

Jughea d potted s hell  he ad precious po tted jug pot she rd  shard pitch   er   she ll woven s he l l            it was multipleand my head was a joke   my head was a joke?   my head became a small vessel and a precious metal was put in theres he l l    jughea d potted s hell  precious po tted   he ad   jug   shell  pot   po  tted   she rd shard pitch   er woven   she ll 

Before bed, my smallyets ask if I’ll meet themat the signpost we create in sleep, & whenthey wake, they’ll ask do I remember.I take us to the cliffing place, dip our wasp-stung faces toward the wind. It licks us till we brine.We dream the world won’t end.Not till the glob we’ve wadded in our pocketsis stuck safe behind our ears. Till that gumballmachine, infection-pink, has

Nerve Chorus (The Word Works, 2018). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, LARB Quarterly Journal, Narrative, The Slowdown, Tin House, and elsewhere. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest and Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize. Her poetry video and multimedia work has been featured in Interim, Narrative Outloud, Writers Resist, and other venues. She earned her MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in New York ...

Auden Lincoln-Vogel is an American filmmaker whose work spans from animation to expanded cinema performances. His experimental films, animations, and live action narrative films have been screened at festivals including Slamdance Film Festival, Black Nights Film Festival, Filmfest Dresden, and the European Media Arts Festival. He is the recipient of a 2016 Fulbright Scholarship in Tallinn, Estonia, where he also received an MA in Animation from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2019. He is curren...

When Angela cornered Lucy in the girls’ locker room and said, “White girl!” there was a moment when Lucy wanted to tell her how she wasn’t white or black, only the perfect mix of both, which is what her father liked to say. Instead, she turned away as her mother had taught her. Her mother would say, “Don’t fight. Be better than those petty girls, baby.” One of the LaLas, either LaDonnia or LaTasha, freshman girls who’d once been friends with Lucy, said, “Cut her hair!” and l...

After my best friend died I became jealous of the fireflies and kept smashing them against my forehead. I wanted my loneliness to be visible to those I loved. For people to see the yellow balloons I hid in my lungs. What I’m saying is I couldn’t breathe for an entire year. When they tore down her elementary school, we all lined up, days later, for bricks. We held them against

George H. Gurley wrote a general interest column for the Kansas City Star three times a week for ten years and was the book review editor for a number of years. He later wrote a regular column for the Lawrence, Kansas Journal World. He has two books of poetry ( Home Movies, Raindust Press and Fugues in the Plumbing, BkMk Press and a collection of columns with Peter Simpson ( Press Box and City Room, BkMk Press). His poems and short stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Poetry an...