My “Peoplescapes” are colorful and exaggerated narratives about the condition of today’s world. Our culture is designed to ignore certain fundamental truths, causing great obstacles to our continuing existence. Addressing these issues by capturing moments of ordinary life confronting us all, while sharply observing and commenting, I’m able to shine a light on these subjects […]
In Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies, Tara Ison taps into her subconscious and squeezes out a rich stream of life lessons. Weaving her personal stories together with scenes from iconic films, Ison reflects on the “influence of film on [her] own authenticity” (5) and specifically examines […]
Longing, as dirge The wood in warp and disrepair has had its share of everything. Never drinking not even rye and absinthe puddled sickly on this old porch. No, the sazerac’s candy burn fails to impress this sagging terrace— it smolders on as coal beneath the eves. Although my foot glances toward his thigh and […]
The palm-of-the-hand stories anthologized in this collection span decades of Yasunari Kawabata’s life, from 1923-1972, and far pre-date the recent moniker “flash fiction,” though they could be classified now using that label. Most of these stories are realistic, detailing families at home, strangers on the train, and past lovers’ meeting by chance. There are a […]
Bonnie started stripping the moment her bedroom door latched behind her. She undid her blouse buttons. The white fabric stuck to her back, and she peeled it off and let it crumple to the floor. She tossed it so that it sat in a small, sweaty mountain in the corner of her room. Next to […]
The much talked about Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is about murder—the murder of black people by white people in a country that has thrived, since its inception, on the abuse of black bodies. This thriving is economic, but it is also cultural and, therefore, part of our identity as Americans. Over […]
Lift Up here even a slim wind sets the outstretched jib singing, but that doesn’t bother me any more than the crane’s height or cab’s close quarters. The way my son tells it, you’d think I lift a hundred tons on my back every day and build those buildings with my bare hands. I say […]
I was hoping that at some point I would figure out what this book is about—maybe you are too. – from The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young (p. 153) It’s difficult to digest all of The Art of Recklessness into an annotation, probably by design. Writer Dean Young often loses the reader with lines […]
In one year, my father died in a crash due to complications of diabetes; I had two surgeries reserved for women 20 years my senior; and I became the guardian for my 92-year-old Grandmother Emma, in the end stages of dementia. My mother, and each of her eight siblings, had diabetes and high blood pressure by age 50, bunions by 55, some form of cancer by 60. […]
LA-based writer Wendy C. Ortiz writes about her loss of innocence in her debut memoir Excavation, which has received rave reviews since its 2014 release. Ortiz’s writing is rife with figurative language like simile, metaphor, personification, parallel structure, alliteration, and repetition, but it is also incredibly self-reflective. Whether it’s the temporal distance that gives her […]
On September 26, 2009, at about a quarter past one in the morning, while outside, a cloudy night sky was closing in on Padua, he, lying on his king-sized futon next to his profoundly asleep wife, was shaken by a violent cough. Eyes staring into the dark bedroom, he was overcome by the age-old fear […]
The Ecstatic is Victor Lavalle’s intriguing debut novel cataloguing two months in the life of Anthony James, a 23-year-old horror-movie loving, obese, unstable, socially inept, obsessed with cleaning, sometimes-schizophrenic, college dropout. Anthony’s narrative begins on September 25, 1995, when he is abruptly rescued from “living wild in his apartment” (3) in Central New York and hauled […]
Rebecca Solnit gets the title for her work The Faraway Nearby from Georgia O’Keefe. “From the faraway nearby” was how O’Keefe would sign letters to the people she loved after moving from New York City to rural New Mexico. Says Solnit, “It was a way to measure physical and psychic geography together” (108). It is […]
I started firewalking after seeing a picture of a monk burn himself to death, but of course it’s more complicated than that. The monk came to history class where we were studying Vietnam, talking about what a mistake it had been, and about the protests against the war, in our country, and over there, where they […]
Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World is a historical fiction novel set between the 1750s and 1810s, encompassing the time frame of the Haitian revolution. Carpentier creates an alternative history to the popular narrative of Toussaint L’Ouverture. The story is narrated by Ti Noël, an uneducated slave of the French plantation owner, M. Lenormand […]
Designed to be murdered by your dog or cat, pet toys appear as dead bodies in these crime scene photographs. Morbidity & Mortality responds to the current popular fascination with cinematic murder and forensics. Contemporary films and CSI-style television programs reveal an obsession with corpses—specifically, artfully composed images of the deceased […]
In the bestselling medical ethics-centered nonfiction work The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot uses primary resources, including one thousand-plus hours of personal interviews, to piece together a life—Henrietta Lacks’s—lost too soon to cervical cancer yet forever immortalized, thanks to the science of cell culture. Like a wedding cake, the book is rich […]
o there is Michelangelo up the ladder
on the platform
laid on his back
wishing he chipped at a piece of sculpture instead…
Ammi and Abu, and that brother of mine— / They don’t know who I am. Curfews & calls / to prayer, weekly lectures at the mosque, / but then, there’s also the smell of bacon…
In Charlotte, where winter brings no guarantee of snow, small children press their palms together, close their eyes so tight they see waves of color, and plead with God to unzip heaven…
“Coming from an ethnic background and living in a diverse city like Los Angeles, my work reflects my identity as an Asian American…”
Single life is-tequila with lime, / shots of travelers, jacks, diamonds, and then spades, / holding back aces- / mocking jokers / paraplegic aged tumblers of the night trip.…
I want to die the way my dog sleeps / a tiny, take-up-no-room-curl. / I want to live like him, too, / rising twice or thrice a day, / a lift up from a stomach, / a grin to an n, / a head-to-tail unfurl…
When cities are burning / and children sleep in your bed / you can’t measure suffering / like sugar, one tablespoon / at a time…
I lost my virginity while the dragon fell. When the enormous canvas beast faltered, people flocked beneath it. Maybe they hoped their attention would encourage it to stay aloft in the dead air, like zealots of a dying god refusing to believe its power could ever wane….
“I trespass in abandoned houses. I spy on the people who once lived inside, watching them through the telescope of time…”
The following three found poems are from the collection Roger That […]
In the downpour / a pair of cobras slithers / into the resort / and the restaurant empties / of foreigners. / The boy sets his tray of drinks / on a table and runs for the itak / he isn’t supposed to keep / in his locker, but does…
I haven’t been to the place where my father isn’t buried, only ashes and the idea of him. I haven’t said my goodbyes over the patch of grass where his body doesn’t lay….
Hindu Santa stashes / boxes of Just for Men / under the bathroom / sink, bare scalp painted / black with faded tooth / brush bristles. Barbasol…
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.