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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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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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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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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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Friday Lunch Blog

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

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Litdish: Ten Questions with Lise Quintana

March 31, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Interviewed by Gail Vannelli
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On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
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The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
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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

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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