History is a border mining town where the immigrant citizen workers were loaded and deported on trains across the line and none of the high school history teachers know about the Bisbee Deportation. None of the history teachers teach the Bisbee Deportation names crushed into dark shafts banished on ghost trains. History knows about systemic indifference and the looting of voices.
This is not surgery, but delicate massage, feeling the flour fall into thickening milk, caving into the mix from the sides, birthing like a glacier into that fabulous muck hole, oozing between her fingers as she delicately mixes a quicksand of sorts, widening its territory until the feel is just right. Not too much, not too little.
but I fell in love over the phone in 1989, his name two low notes shoved out my throat, repeated like a gulf smacking shore rocks in starlight, our letters tucked between issues of Uncanny X-Men because I did not want a willow switch across my back
The hijab had made her feel blessed when she had first been allowed to put it on. She thought she was praising Allah. She knew she was pleasing her father. He had looked at her in a different way that day.[…]
This was different. This was x-rays, exams, and endless procedures. Like everything in this god-forsaken land, her body seemed to be drying up beneath the unrelenting sun.[…]
The women from my mother’s generation would have held their hands to their cheeks in shock and dismay. They would have cursed me for acting like a widow when I was fortunate to have a husband, alive and well! They would have whispered darkly about me, the irresponsible married woman who wore the symbol of widowhood so blithely![…]
I think of Korean immigrant writers who lived longer in the United States than I have, writers who wanted to share their stories but died without doing so. And others who did, wrote in Korean and were not translated. Their immigrant experiences are different from mine. That is why I feel compelled to write and share stories on behalf of those voiceless, invisible, powerless women.[…]
She has tried opening up about her trauma to people she thought she could trust, but some friends distanced themselves or chided her for not “getting over it” when her story didn’t fit neatly into a survivor narrative. They didn’t want to hear how the twin poisons of abuse and silence seep their way into the body, how even the most processed trauma lies latent.[…]
Shannon’s use of watercolor and India Ink are unforced and create beauty within flaws while crafting an earthy grunge appearance.
check under the keyboard because that generation no
try: [my name + sister’s name] he liked me more no
You are invasive, like water through stone cracking grey
shimmers inside, like jelly fish in the Pacific swimming,
stuck to legs and arms, stinging skin in the salty brine.
I need to tell the stories of African American people’s history and accomplishments in hope of strengthening and building confidence in the community. I examine the precious moments that have been erased from our timelines and that need to be brought back, such as their backbreaking work and the unforgivable wrongs they endured.[…]
isn’t it funny how
femininity is shamed even when it’s on women? i find it funny as a man very much in touch with his feminine side just how much of men’s hatred of women gets projected on me.[…]
The poetic form has a compressed intensity to it. There’s such a focus. With the essay form, there’s more room to expand upon things. In an essay, I can wander around a little bit more; I can go on a tangent and reconnect with the main focus of the essay later. I like having that room.[…]
My drawings incorporate various combinations of paper, crayon, watercolor, ink, and digital embellishments using the Procreate app. Some are all digital. Whatever I’m working on, my goal is to make it new.
I’m one of those poets who gets the most creative satisfaction out of editing. That said, I don’t think I would enjoy working on a poem or group of poems after more than a few months. I tend to tinker until I make myself sick of it.[…]
Stage Two You are invasive, like water through stone cracking grey
shimmers inside, like jelly fish in the Pacific swimming,
stuck to legs and arms, stinging skin in the salty brine.
Dark murmuration, wall of bones and feathers and small
bodies swooping through the sky, blotting out light and time […]
Allen, TX In a stash of nostalgia my parents keep a piece of orange paper. Typed at the top it reads: “What three things are most important to you?” and underneath in neat rounded writing my teacher transcribed my answer: “God, Jesus, and money.”[…]
how often and when to learn significant places significant conversations significant persons to provide personalized experiences relating building memories building navigation assembling itself language feelings to black one binary white zero[…]
My work explores an inner world of stored images and reflects on the shifting space of landscape, narrative, and memory. In the context of globalization, I am interested in how any image conveys a sense of time and place specific to a personal and cultural history; drawing and painting have been the constants on which I rely to investigate these questions […]
That radical melding of reader and character is, in my opinion, one of the highest rewards of reading, and I strive to create stories that encourage readers to experience it.[…]
And this is when fear grips me the tightest. How can I protect them? How can I keep them safe—[…]
Magpie’s Dazzling
when the magpie comes
he skulks behind his splendor
listen as he mirrors your tongue
careful, your ear, to the mummer
Chief Smiling Officer of the Art Cart, Saba Shahid-Moir, MS, has made it her mission to help those who can’t smile so easily anymore due to complications from Parkinson’s disease […]
Women always choose survival over sadness. The story of our constant lack goes like this: in a land, some land, any land, men
stole the beans & rice, fed our bodies to the war, any war […]
My art was born out the quest for perfection, and in every work that I create, I make a realistic drawing of people, showing the emotions they wish we could see through their eyes, with pencils. […]
When she visited Antioch University, Los Angeles in December 2019, Rae Dubow hosted a seminar entitled, Writers at Work: Performance Workshop for Writers, where she worked with several students to teach more effective ways for them to read their work in front of the class. […]
It takes an inundation to isolate my isolation. I hope you remember―how a moon flooded fields for yellow spirits to rove, how we hastened through terraces into shrubs of pleasure. You: denuder, I: stony road. […]
I do not think my family knows how to talk without belligerence behind the lilt of their jaws. We are the kind of people who do not deserve to love. I want to place a bouquet of flowers I cannot name in my mouth […]
Can I find the words I mark electronically without the cluster of stars I draw in margins to show what is important? Can I discover a buried treasure finger-flicking entries on a screen? Can I flip pages for perusal of bright maps on unexpected pages? […]
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
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