Word from the Editor
That Which Has Yet to Emerge
by Regan Humphrey
It gives me great pleasure to introduce Lunch Ticket’s 19th Issue, themed That Which Has Yet to Emerge. This issue is nothing if not a reflection of our strange and unprecedented times. At the end of 2021’s first act—this June intermission, if you will—we present to you a collection of work that brings hope, humor, seriousness, and solidarity to a moment we have never experienced before.
“Between Fire and Ice” is an ongoing photographic entry around the subject of wildfires within the forefront of climate change.
Writing for Young People
Sweet Tooth
by Delaney Burk
Cherry Hand Pies
Perfectly easy twist on a Fourth of July classic. Enjoyed by all, but especially your boyfriend’s parents, and you’ll be so flattered that your dessert is the first one gone that you won’t even scold him when he puts his hand on your butt for the family photo
Creative Nonfiction
Regarding the Highchair You’re Selling on Facebook
by Liz Breen
Dear Tom
Hey, Tom!
Hi, Tom.
Tom –
What’s up? How’s it going? How are you? It’s crazy to be messaging you after all this time. Crazy because ten years has gone by and still, I’m not as old as you were when we dated. Would you call what we did “dating”?
Featured Fiction
Zoom Yoga
by Liza Monroy
A woman died in Zoom yoga and no one noticed. She fell from against the wall during dolphin pose. We were all on mute. Nobody heard the thud. Everyone else onscreen in gallery view was still inverted, balanced on sphinx-like forearms, legs behind extended straight up toward the ceiling, a stance that turned their bodies into almost perfect L’s. Her screen name read only “iPad.”
I kept waiting for her to get back up, but she didn’t.
Featured Poetry
nebula
by Kolbe Riney
I meet a girl
who is an alien for Halloween,
which is the secret
queer costume of the decade;
she wears it in green
sparkles
and two antennae launching from her hair.
I am trying
to tell if she is straight,
and also,
to be sexy,
so I ask,
what is your favorite emoji?
Lunch Special
On Novels and Screenplays, Character Tropes, and Black Horror: An Interview with Tananarive Due
interviewed by Barbara Platts
A Black horror writer since the mid-1990s, Tananarive Due has an eclectic range of experience, from writing books and screenplays to producing documentaries and teaching at universities.
Flash Prose
Ultramodern Love
by Soramimi Hanarejima
After placing a bottle of consciousness decoherent in my basket, I look up and find myself locking gazes with a shopper at the opposite end of the recreational delirium aisle. Instantly, I am enchanted by her augmented eyes. Which themselves aren’t an uncommon enhancement, but her modified irises are clearly a bespoke customization. They give her an incisive look, even though I know the violet nanocrystals glimmering around her pupils are simply a mechanism for dynamically directing light toward or away from her retinas in response to ambient conditions.
Featured Translation
Nine Excerpts from Padre Tierra: A Poem in 50 Parts
by Mariana Zano, translated by Blas Falconer
I sleep and everything sleeps.
The bread dough sleeps
in the bowl covered
with a damp cloth.
The jars are sleeping
in the cupboard,
each a womb
of enameled glass.
Quinces sleep,
household suns,
on embroidered bridal linens
in the hope chest.
