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Proclamación de Amores

June 10, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / Cesar Galan

Poets are just whisperers, whispering the rose verse, Weaving words as a curse. They wander the groves In order to find doves. They wander the meadows, So they find adagios. They wander the streams, To find the crowns of queens. Poets are just whisperers, Who their lament makes ornate.[…]

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Santa Gabriela, 2019, 100% Cotton Photographic Tapestry, 60”x80”

Mi Religión

June 10, 2020/in Art, Art, Summer-Fall 2020 / Gabi Magaly

I draw from my experience within this toxic culture and provide a call to action for the women who don’t have a voice to feel empowered and for the men with a little too much to say to be softened. The imagery I use within my work references the everyday accessible household items that are traditionally associated with my Mexican-American household[…]

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Thickly Settled / Flight Risk

June 9, 2020/in Flash Prose, Flash Prose, Summer-Fall 2020 / Laura S. Marshall

We drive back behind a sluggish logging truck. The nodule in my neck is bigger this year, crowding my windpipe. The truck takes every turn with us, like it knows where we live. Maybe we could get you some scarves, you say […]

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Credit: Julian Parker-Burns

Opuntia stenopetala / translation or prayer / luciérnaga

June 9, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / María José Giménez

your island, before storms and faces crashed on your shores with new names for death and stolen lands, whips and dark nights, histories of ancestors piled in the hulls of ships[…]

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Feng Shui and Other Subversive Religions

June 9, 2020/in Fiction, Fiction, Summer-Fall 2020 / Yong Takahashi

Jackie Miller danced around her kitchen when she learned she landed a temporary-to-permanent position at Finch Life & Casualty. It had been years since she held down a regular nine-to-five. Her duties entailed answering the ten-line phone system, greeting guests, and opening the mail […]

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A Life in Six Thousand, Five Hundred and Forty Songs

June 9, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Pat Hulsebosch

The small FedEx box arrived in DC bearing an unlikely return address: Peter C. Hulsebosch III, Houston, TX. Surely this wasn’t from my brother, the brother who’d once told me he would never send a card, much less a gift, because then I’d get used to it […]

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Credit: Arce Jebbel

The Doll’s House / Let’s go! To Paris not to live, but to die / No Need to Savor Youth

June 9, 2020/in Summer-Fall 2020, Translation, Translation / by Na Hye-Sok, translated by Tanya Ko Hong

Blame me not, but society, morals, laws, and customs Your mother as a pioneer was a martyr of destiny Someday you may come as ambassadors to Paris Find my grave, leave one flower for me[…]

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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Ko_Tanya_credit_Arce_Jebbel.jpg 640 427 Lisa Croce https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lisa Croce2020-06-09 15:55:482023-08-08 10:16:28The Doll’s House / Let’s go! To Paris not to live, but to die / No Need to Savor Youth
6_PiecesofMe

The Selfie: A Physical-Digital Hybrid of the Human Face

June 9, 2020/in Art, Art, Summer-Fall 2020 / Sophia Maggio

While I know all of these people deeply, I was most interested in my ability to render them anonymous to both myself and my audience. This led to an array of floating heads that, like anonymous online spaces, capture—and then distort[…]

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Ilya Kaminsky, Author

June 9, 2020/in Interviews, Interviews, Summer-Fall 2020 / Interviewed by Janet Rodriguez

The things that tend to happen in some of the worst situations elsewhere, also do occur here, even though Americans pretend they do not. It is, in some ways, what Deaf Republic is about.[…]

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Kerler_credit_Milberger, MichaelMichael Milberger

Excerpts from Singing Through Clenched Teeth

June 8, 2020/in Gabo, Gabo, Summer-Fall 2020 / Yoysef Kerler, translated by Maia Evrona

Like frightened birds after a hunter’s shot—My dreams scatter in flight when I open up my eyes[…]

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At the Lynching Museum, Bryan Stevenson Says / Signs Nailed to the Mailbox on Winnequah Road / Reparations

June 8, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / Dominic W. Holt

The auction block still rides on the black backs of ghosts hurling themselves town to town […]

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Katelyn Keating author's photo

Katelyn Keating, Writer, Editor, Publisher

June 8, 2020/in Interviews, Interviews, Summer-Fall 2020 / Interviewed by Barbara Platts

The most important piece of advice I got from my first mentor was to get as broad of an education as possible without diluting it.[…]

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Necessary Shadows / Flowercrackers / Empty Stomach Full Belly

June 8, 2020/in Flash Prose, Flash Prose, Summer-Fall 2020 / Vikram Ramakrishnan

Since Paati died, fireworks were the only thing that could get Thatha up and out of bed, and the goggles were the only thing that let Amma let us keep watching the shows.[…]

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8__The_Over-Thinker

Sentiments in Clay

June 8, 2020/in Art, Art, Summer-Fall 2020 / Hallie Maxwell

In works like, The Hands of Time, I convey the delicate nature balance between life and death. In life, death is constantly brushing our fingertips. And yet, in death, our connection to life makes it so that we never truly die.[…]

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dav

Dreams and Fantasies

June 8, 2020/in Art, Art, Summer-Fall 2020 / Mohammad Shirvanizadeh

Today’s human beings feel comfortable with their non-historical past, but during an ideological process and in deep connection with social events, the nature of these dreams changes and they are abstract.[…]

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Credit: Paige DePratter

42,844

June 8, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Megan Lea

Simian Immunodeficiency Virus adapted to live in the body of a person, and then the window was pried
open: open to spread through the villages of Cameroon, and then the rest of Africa, and then the world
beyond, until it found its way to a club in the suburbs of New Orleans and into the lifeblood of the man
who lived next door, my uncle.[…]

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Aditi Khorana, Author

June 7, 2020/in Interviews, Interviews, Summer-Fall 2020 / Interviewed by Louise Rozett

Aditi Khorana grew up in India, Denmark, and New England, and has worked as a journalist for ABC News, CNN, and PBS, and also as a marketing consultant for Fox, Paramount, and Sony. All of this life experience adds up to a unique, empowering, fierce body of work, including two novels, Mirror in the Sky and Library of Fates […]

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Credit: Jobi Adams

Signs Of Spring / Who Made The World / Black Gold

June 7, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / Halee Kirkwood

The chapped lips of last season’s flora, the winter-cracked cattails slowly recovering their limber. Today I saw a willow precisely […]

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Returning to My Father’s Kitchen

June 7, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Monica Macansantos

I take solace in knowing how to make my father’s chicken adobo, because when he died in 2017, it was one of the many dishes he had made for us that wasn’t lost to us forever with his sudden passing[…]

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Nicole HebdonCredit: Elizabeth Pellette

Addressing Why I Didn’t Do My Homework and Other Things

June 7, 2020/in Summer-Fall 2020, Young Adult, Young Adult / Nicole Hebdon

But I couldn’t put her away. I was mourning. And I needed to mourn. That’s healthy.[…]

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Credit: Rebecca Aranda

LOLITA ERASURES: 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 14, 18

June 7, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / Eva Della Lana
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Credit Vladimir Levashov

Dead Fox

June 7, 2020/in Summer-Fall 2020, Translation, Translation / by Julia Lukshina, translated by Anne O. Fisher
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Cappuccino Take U-E

June 7, 2020/in Fiction, Fiction, Summer-Fall 2020 / Christine Kandic Torres

Those calls have been fewer and farther between these last few weeks. I suspect you’ve got to realize that, but if I’m honest, I’ve stopped wondering who it is you’re fighting during your backroom breaks at Best Buy instead of reapplying to your undergraduate program. […]

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Before the Shrine of My Fermentation Cabinet

June 7, 2020/in Flash Prose, Flash Prose, Summer-Fall 2020 / Hannah Suchor

I crouch before the fermentation cabinet every other morning to check on my scoby, the color of my kraut, to smell the bacterial funk, and each time I am transported.[…]

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Angela Morales, Author and Essayist

June 7, 2020/in Lunch Special, Lunch Special, Summer-Fall 2020 / Interviewed by Regan Humphrey

These older Mexican ladies can feel like their childhoods were important. Their childhoods had beauty; their childhoods are worthy of literature.[…]

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selfie

Sex After Rape

June 6, 2020/in Art, Art, Summer-Fall 2020 / Zarra TM

I have found ways to navigate sex—and trauma—anew. The following series explores the pain of sexual violence as well as the rediscovery of my body.[…]

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Credit: Luke Peterson

Whales of the Allegheny  / The Crown and Anchor Pub / The Nurse Log

June 6, 2020/in Poetry, Poetry, Summer-Fall 2020 / Tobias Peterson
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Lily Neusaenger

Pulled Apart

June 6, 2020/in Summer-Fall 2020, Young Adult, Young Adult / Lily Neusaenger

They grin—a subtle, instinctive apology offered on a crooked row of short, fat teeth screaming for braces and fluoride. Held out on a silver tray, the smile is meant to flatten the offense they don’t yet recognize. They’re too young and they don’t understand taxes or sex or the government or the reason they’re the ones chosen for the roles of Mary and Joseph in the Christmas play every year, but something about this feels right for them.[…]

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The Story of the Family Samovar

June 6, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Nadja Maril

During childhood I heard the stories about the shtetls and the pogroms that escalated to become the
Holocaust where 6 million Jews—two thirds of the Jewish population in Europe— were killed for no other
reason than for being Jewish.[…]

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Aminah Mae Safi, Author

June 6, 2020/in Interviews, Interviews, Summer-Fall 2020 / Interviewed by Regan Humphrey
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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

Being A Girl is Hard

November 28, 2025/in Blog / Shawn Elliott
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Diagnosis: Persisted or Silent Inheritance

November 7, 2025/in Blog / Paula Williamson
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The Queer Ultimatum Made Me Give My Own Ultimatum

September 26, 2025/in Blog / Lex Garcia
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

The Lilac and The Housefly: A Tale of Tortured Romanticism

October 24, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Nikki Mae Howard
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Dig Into Genre

May 23, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Lauren Howard
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The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

April 25, 2025/in Midnight Snack / paparouna
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

I Try So Hard Not to Bite Off His Tongue & One Poem

November 21, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Sheree La Puma
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Those from sadness – Found Poem

November 14, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Yirui Pan
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My Town

October 31, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Shoshauna Shy
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

Editing issue 28, I felt something similar to the way I feel near water: I dove into my own private world. The world above the surface kept roaring, of course. The notifications, deadlines, the constant noise was always there. But inside the work, inside these poems and stories and artwork, there was a quiet that felt entirely mine. A place where I could breathe differently.

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