An orphan whose testicles never dropped is adopted by nuns. He pursues a musical career in Austria and New York but only progresses so far.
Picks
Jefferson Davis the Nth
Sublimation: to change the form, but not the essence. (Merriam Webster)
When we received this piece, we were told “Jefferson Davis the Nth” is a story about the sublimation of racism in the New South. It seemed a shame to have the word go to waste, so here it is presented to you along this short piece of fiction.
Lora Lee Broke Up With The Ocean
A short story about connections and romanticized ideas of people, about bodies, of water and otherwise, about understanding and what it consists of.
Detachment Takes All Of You
A man’s work life balance takes an interesting toll on his body.
A Perfect Storm
When weather reporter Ash Patel-Brown sets the unlikely precedent of making accurate weather predictions, people get confused and angry. Some are furious she’s breaking from an age old tradition, others are upset that they’ve made their lives more predictable and boring. Chaos ensues.
Are we still talking about the weather?
Analog
“Analog is a lyric essay that stems from two of my greatest sources of delight: my non-familial relationships and my mild obsession with recording things, often via photography. Broadly, it’s a meditation on how to cherish moments and people that bring me joy when everything is in constant flux.”
Dissecting Destacarse
Rene Camarillo is an East Los Angeles born and raised creative who produces textiles and handcrafted apparel with themes of immigrant realities, neglected labor, and critique on the social engagement of fast fashion industry practices.
Carousel
A story about how people come in and out of our lives in both significant and insignificant ways. We hear this story told from three perspectives: one of a bus driver, and both members of a young couple.
Charity Shop Evangelists
This piece interrogates the purpose of faith in giving people a continued sense of purpose in America: a culture of perennial novelty that seeks to discard people when they are unable to find a place in the narrow routine of its population. This essay also opens up a further interrogation of one of the biggest problems facing our culture: how do we resist the urge to dispose of people, as we do our used items? And when people have been disposed of, how do they survive? Robert examines it through the behavior of these charity shop evangelists, while also examining his own relationship to this religious community as a queer man.
The Horse’s Name Was Friday
A creative exploration of understanding oneself through one’s physical body. Take a look into the nature of symbols using personal accounts, family history, and the work of Umberto Eco. It is, above all, a personal confession told through the eyes – or perhaps terrifying mouth – of girlhood.
MAROU
MAROU sits down with one of our editors to discuss mental health, moving to a new city, and how art isn’t just something we do, but who we are. She also talks about the music that has changed her life for the better, and how she’s glad she listened to the signs that kept telling her she was headed down the right path.
Napoleon
A young boy wakes up one day to find that everything he touches turns into Napoleon.
Persian Looney Tunes
Torn between the constraints of old tradition and the radical modernism in a box set of Looney Tunes dvd’s brought to him by a cousin visiting from Miami, Amir reconciles the tension of his background within intransigent, punk art.
Deep Dive
How did I end up sitting across from an ostrich who asks too many questions? It’s Friday Funday!
Of Overtures and Encores
Cindy Xu (she/her/hers) is a New York-based actor, community creator, and experimental theatermaker from Vancouver, Canada. In this artist showcase, she discusses community care initiatives in Chinatown, creating opportunities for emerging artists, and using Glamor Shots to lift up senior citizens!
Luck is a Funny Thing
Caitlin Taylor So retells the stories her grandpa told her about the Vietnam War, from her perspective as his granddaughter. Reflecting on what these stories mean to her, she connects them to her annual Lunar New Year wishes to her grandparents. She grapples with how it is possible to give back to your elders when they have given you everything.
Boy, Descending
N.H. Van Der Haar wrote this work because he was deeply interested in their Gay Sauna, how it occupies a space in pre-legality homosexual life and how delicate its position can feel in the wider culture of Pride and Melbourne culture.
This Is Not A Watermelon
With some help from you, reliable sources, and our editorial team we have put together a brief guide for learning about what is currently happening in Palestine, around the world, and what we can do to support people in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
We Can Forget It For You
An experimental fiction story laid out as a medical form for memory erasure, filled out by a person who has just lost their husband in a tragic way that haunts them. Highlighting the power of grief and memory, with some light critique on the American medical system, the author hopes readers will find familiarity, empathy, and a little bit of horror in Alex’s ordeal and what they are willing to sacrifice.
What Falls When We’re Not Looking
After hitting her head in an accident, a woman has a strange conversation with a fish about the limits of her life and ends up with a little more hope than before.
What Was Barbie Made For?
Where does the film, and by extension, the doll, fit into our discussions of feminism, capitalism, and nostalgia?
The Adventures of Isabelle Book II: Journey To Orphalese
Join Princess Isabelle of Xamayca as she answers her first call to adventure on the high seas to free the people of Orphalese from the sinister Captain Flint and his fleet of greedy pirates.
Yoba
Growing up as a queer Salvadoran in Los Angeles, Cruz portrays his memories of childhood in El Salvador and his experiences coming to the US at the age of five.
Why Do Movie Audiences Love Suicide Bombing?
There’s something strange about the way Hollywood celebrates explosive martyrdom.
Life of Pi and Bubble Tea
Life of Pi is a book written by a White Canadian man about a Pondicherry Indian boy which somehow became a Taiwanese icon in 2012.
Rainfall
A short fictional piece in which two people debate about whether a painting of the real world is of any merit or significance.
Mungo
A collection of short, somewhat surreal poems about a little guy called ‘MUNGO’ who invents things.
A Look at “Untitled Gamer Play”
Our Editors interview Jason Wang and Sally Chen, a writer artist team responsible for the production of “Untitled Gamer Play”
Wasp Hour
A dejected child becomes distracted from their detached relationship with their mother by The Wasp—a grand, frightening, uniquely exhilarating onset in the child’s life.
Minutes To Midnight
A college new years party becomes a search for the perfect moment. A stage play about self discovery, maturity, and personal growth.
Idling
A play about gay yearning and missed timing, two college girls sit in a car waiting for a friend to sell them drugs and learn secrets about each other that they’ve kept hidden for years.
Why We Made Realpolitik
Realpolitik is a space for the typically excluded young and outspoken voices to share more complex pieces of writing, like personal essays and op-eds, specifically in the always-tumultuous field of politics.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation explores natural cycles through a queer lens. The piece deals with loss, and rebirth, especially the losses and rebirths that are associated with queer identity; ostracization, internal conflict, self acceptance, and transformation.
New Landscapes
The intentions of a painter and an environmentalist are pretty similar. Both aim to preserve the landscapes they love.
Queen Of The Pulps
Pulp fiction magazines have always teetered between the line of low and high art, and as such are considered fairly niche when it comes to art historical scholarship.
Rubik’s Cube Therapy
There are 43 quintillion possible configurations on a Rubik’s Cube, and only one of those is correct. The cube functions as a distraction from the messiness of the world.