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Sasha Fierce asks ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Immaculata Abba

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 […]

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Q & A

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Chaun Ballard

—Do you have a fear of losing people? I once rustled moonlight underneath the blanket and threatened to keep it. I unwrapped it slowly like sand loosed by waves, a child with one present come Christmas morning. —Do you feel that being black makes you a target? If shooting holes into darkness was not a […]

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Portrait of a Slave-Owner’s Wife

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Aileen Bassis

Light folds around her       yellow-silk like a pillar-candle Shadows round her cheek             curve between lips press below her nose On her left a thickened impasto of fading paint and varnish layers obscure shapes and it’s hard to see a dark boy in blue livery bending brown skin      black hair   without a stroke of light to […]

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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Jennifer Ly https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Jennifer Ly2018-11-23 11:36:462018-11-28 08:13:56Portrait of a Slave-Owner’s Wife

Architectural Integrity & Aretha Franklin Has Died

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Dalton Day

Architectural Integrity My floor could possibly be coming apart but I’m hanging on for now & for good reason Catastrophe should only be used as the name for a fragrance that only exists in a fictional universe One where a person starts every day with a montage full of clues I’ve spent the past week […]

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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Jennifer Ly https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Jennifer Ly2018-11-23 11:36:212018-11-24 11:13:40Architectural Integrity & Aretha Franklin Has Died

Mayhem—Arrival and Departure

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Kiyanna Hill

Rally (n.) 1650s, originally in the military sense of ‘a regrouping of renewed             action after a repulse’ I confuse the armored buses for deliverance                a line of colored steel     some tarnished            some spit— shined  My surprise at this release of white bodies              Their flocking together Their delivery of          renewed action the guns hanging […]

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In Champaign, Illinois

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by You Li

Up the stairs coiled around the hotel my new friend Frank and I are lamenting that there is no gym after all—he lamenting— I going along—at my door I half stick the key in, he asks again about how to iron his pants, I have these pants with a crease—he uses his hand to saw […]

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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Dele Smith https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Dele Smith2018-11-23 11:34:412018-11-28 21:38:57In Champaign, Illinois

Elegy, yet again

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Clara Paiva

Not a pyre, but a chimney, a beetle shaking mercilessly on top of my doormat to the sound of its own catharsis a tongue my neck both hands shaking exactly the same. My teeth as antenna & my cords wings Sing I watched a beetle die today; not a crate not a crypt not a […]

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Poem in Which You Are the Church

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by C.J. Strauss

Real boy the love I have made to you is unremarkable, as it should be in a perfect world, impossible to tell where you end and I begin. Real boy I have recessed in your nation, your looted land, pronounced it dead, & closed the borders I once bled for. Real boy I dream of […]

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Can You Remove Your Necklace During Work Hours?

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad

And the first words out of my mouth do not buck into a shield, do not blast his ears with refusal, not never, in my quiet defense something un-proud: it’s not even Muslim, as I convert that s to a z, and twist, twist my hair all of it uncovered for his ease and a […]

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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Jennifer Ly https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Jennifer Ly2018-11-23 11:31:442018-11-24 11:09:11Can You Remove Your Necklace During Work Hours?

Plaza Hospicio Cabañas (Guadalajara)

November 23, 2018/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2019 / by James K. Zimmerman

perched in a cricket cage the canary waits to read your life you stand, sunbound eating mamey, guanaba favas con chile, pan dulce drinking agua pura y piña drop a few pesos in the guira the marimba comes to life two men like a wind-up toy or well-trained spider monkeys play Guadalajara, two mallets in […]

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Issue Archive

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Genre Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

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

Today’s course:

Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

May 9, 2025/in Blog / Gale Naylor
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Products of Our Environment

March 14, 2025/in Blog / Mitko Grigorov
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Mother-to-Mother: An Open Letter about White Privilege and Fragility

November 22, 2024/in Blog / Dr. Valerie Nyberg
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

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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On The Map

March 28, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Ariadne Will
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Tale of the resistant apple tree

June 6, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TaharBekri.jpg 512 340 Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson2025-06-06 11:00:072025-06-02 19:06:30Tale of the resistant apple tree

Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

May 30, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Ghazal
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we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

May 16, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/headshot-translator-Gabriella-Bedetti.jpg 400 400 translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes2025-05-16 11:00:362025-05-14 17:05:21we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

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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

The managers of Lunch Ticket all agreed that issue 26 needed to have a theme, and that theme had a responsibility to call for work relating to what we are seeing in society. We wanted a theme that resonated with Antioch University MFA’s mission of advancing “racial, social, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice,” and we felt it was time to take a stand…

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