Blood Drive
flowery wine-scented air rises from cotton
swabs that have cleaned so many arms.
now they are little litter-poppies
loitering about the needle and syringe […]
Entries by Sang Yun Jee
O’Hare
It’s always the drive to the airport
when you look at me
merging concern from
the corner of your right eye
in my direction […]
American Alien
I am an alien
My eyes, my skin color, my being
Jump out like a wilting wisteria in the midst of
A perfumed garden of pruned, perfect, and pretty pansies […]
Styx
In this poem, I am an outlaw / though what do
I know about headstones or hemoglobin / my
father promised me that Morricone captured the
most important feature of existence / the whistle […]
The Lottery
Moving to a better school district would mean leaving behind a community where seeing Black leaders, business owners, and even law enforcement, is commonplace for my child. And in the current political climate, it means exposing her to a much higher likelihood of overt racism, on top of the well-documented racial disparities that have long plagued Black students. […]
Litdish: Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Poet; Amy Shimshon-Santo, Poet; and Mireya S. Vela, Author
Three successful Los Angeles-based writers have found a path toward community through shared passions and mutual respect. Poets Adrian Ernesto Cepeda and Amy Shimshon-Santo, along with nonfiction writer Mireya S. Vela, form a tightly bonded trio, challenging racial and cultural biases in their writing and beyond. […]
Writers Read: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
That we are in the hands of a master storyteller who writes with a poet’s precision about fractious themes is clear. With a seer’s intuition, [Vuong] guides us into uncomfortable terrains of migration and displacement, violence and love, trauma and loss, poverty and addiction, the body and identity, queerness and masculinity.
Spotlight: Mom I’m Not a Transvestite, I Do Art
I’m very interested in the inner worlds of other people—that’s the main reason why impressionistic portraiture is the basis of my artwork. I deny the stereotypes of appearance and gender and paint boys with makeup and earrings […]
Four from the Graveyard
[creative nonfiction] In China, you are expected to conceal your emotions. Sometimes, it helps to comfort yourself with a fictitious, whimsical story on death, like that of the bone carver. But when you are helpless, lost in the sea of your emotions, there is nothing left to do but to let the waves pull you down […]
Spotlight: 85%
[fiction] On any given day, I spend about 85% of my energy trying to not look crazy. Which is why it’s really pissing me the fuck off that Emma is spending about 0% of her energy not listening to the really simple thing I asked her to do: stay on her half of the desk. […]
Natashia Deón, Author
Natashia Deón is the acclaimed author of Grace (Counterpoint Press, 2016), a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016, and winner of the American Library Association Black Caucus 2017 First Novel Prize, among other honors. Deón is a graduate of the University […]
Rets
The children pick the peeling yellow paint from the bathroom pipes and lick it while Mama is gabbing on the phone with her sister. Papa returns from work at four and takes the yellow plastic strap out of the second dresser drawer and whips their thighs since Mama has delegated punishment for their transgressions during […]
Isaac Fitzgerald, Editor, Essayist
Who is Isaac Fitzgerald? This inked essayist is the love child of Jack Kerouac and The Dropkick Murphys on paper. He is gritty and adventurous like his beatnik predecessor, but has the modern punk rock sensibility of the same band that hails from his home state of Massachusetts. Fitzgerald easily picks up where the beatniks […]
Jesus Wears a Puerto Rican Flag on his Jacket and a Flower in his Hair
in college, the men i gave trembling permission to scurry inside of me, would, more often than not, send me hobbling to the student clinic. the nurse, as incandescent as a light bulb with rage, tells me that sex is not supposed to require three tylenol. my roommate, eyebrow raised at the troupes of grubby-nailed […]
Encounters
[fiction] Kristen’s dog is named Banjo. He’s big—not just tall, fluffy too, and cream-colored like the living room carpet. When I pet him, my hands sink down all the way to the second finger joint. He’s so big, he reminds me a little of the horses up at the farm. I was never really around […]
Ada Limón, Author, Poet
Ada Limón is a poet and author of Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World (both debuted in 2006), Sharks in the Rivers (2010), and Bright Dead Things (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her latest book, The Carrying, is the […]
Beyond the Waters of Time
You dip the sugar-speckled Parle-G in your tea and take a bite of the mushy biscuit, savoring the milky memories, watching the rain peter out to a mizzle in the garden outside the verandah where you sit in your bamboo cane chair. After the incessant spells of kalbaishakhi showers, the earth smells of rain, as […]
Thicket
[translated fiction] A movement in the corner of her eye. She turns her head, but it is only the woods. Succulent leaves reach toward her. Behind them, ferns, a tree trunk. Mark steps in front of her, the woods vanish behind his torso. She stares at the coarse fabric of his shirt, the embroidery on […]
Dis/obedience, Synecdoche, Vice Versa, & Machinations of the Absurdly Happy
Anna Wang is a high school student from Illinois. Her writing has been recognized by […]
Spotlight: Windows
I often work in series creating bodies of work that highlights certain interests such as architecture, space, and scale. I like to investigate the way in which spaces are constructed and how the environment shapes the times we inhabit—influencing our identities, senses, and emotions […]
Spotlight: Pull Me Out of the Earth and Feed Me to My Madness (after The X-Files)
Look at our bones laid bare on the metal or in the grass. Slides spill like memories across the wall and while he sees his favorite legend again Scully has to hold her science in her chest. What even is real in 1999? In 2018 when I turn off cable news call my grandmother stuff […]
The Reluctant Activist
I rifled through the plastic container, searching for the perfect nail to affix my handmade sign to the tree. Renee, my partner in crime, stood to my right holding the “NO Gas Station!” signs that we’d just made in my garage. She seemed unconcerned about the vehicles that whizzed by a few feet from us, […]
New Math
Dear [REDACTED], At first, I stared at your e-mail and blinked a few times, thinking that perhaps my contact lenses were blurry. It said, “Thank you for your interest in employment with [REDACTED]. Your application was received and carefully reviewed. However, based on the information you submitted, it was determined you did not meet the […]
Á La Carte: The Spring of Rapeseed Flowers
[translated poetry] Thousands of Chinese Acres of Spring When the budding of a tree isn’t closely observed Rapeseed flowers have unfolded the season by their full blossoms The golden dream of the earth thus rolls out under the cloud flowers Is woven in the wind and undulates to the farthest in March Rapeseed flowers have […]
Spotlight: Pranam
[fiction] It smells the same, even after all these years—the smell of tens of thousands of prayers exhaled above palms pressed to the heart, thousands of bare feet padding into the prayer room, thousands upon thousands of incense sticks lit in front of the same statues, day in and day out. How could this building […]
Sasha Fierce asks ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’
Today I find comfort in the thunder’s holy growl. Hunger sometimes smells like petrichor: dead bacteria awakening our most primal sense to the promise of replenishment. All this while, I’ve been singing along: Honey, please try to understand it’s time to love your woman. Maybe it is time to make me your woman, to let the […]
Laura, Keeper of the Red Pandas
[creative nonfiction] Before I talk about Halloween and Corey Fisher and the two of us in the coat closet dressed as toilet paper mummies, let me start with Mom. Mom grew up in Chicago. As a teenager, she worked summers at Brookfield zoo. Head zookeeper of the petting zoo. All her stories from that time […]
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A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.