I have always invited life to flourish,so alluring that animals heave their weight for milesand anxious antelopes dare to tasteeven while crocodiles shelterbehind my insidious sheen.I penetrate the corners of bodieswith moist workings through frantic cells.In winter,...
Art & Culture
january 32nd
imagine seeing your friendwearing priest clotheshelping people carry a bodydown the streetimagine a religious communitychoosing to remember youby telling everyone the mostembarrassing shit about youfor centuries after you dieimagine a more believabledescription of...
Twin Silences
There’s no one in your poetry, she said.It’s an abandoned barracks, I replied.It’s a prefect vacuum. Nothing ever happens, she complained. That’s because we’re tired, I explained. Certain circumstances are vying to defeat us. Another thing I’ve noticed, she continued,...
Acknowledgement
An exploration of the mathematics of sex in social terms.
5 Aussie Reads
“Visitors … could be forgiven for wondering why we are so pre-occupied with questions of identity - speech made by Prime Minister Paul Keating at the 1990 Australian Book Publishers Awards. Australian culture has never been particularly well looked after...
The Glamorous, Immortal Nostalgia of Miss PiggyÂ
Dedicated to Frank Oz and Eric Jacobson. “It’s because I’m a pig isn’t it? … I did not get the nomination for best actress … can you honestly say I am not Oscar material? … In this male chauvinist, non pig world, did you ever think I even stood a...
Mary Oliver’s ‘Her Grave’ and the Bittersweet Joy of DogsÂ
Grief, in these days where the sun is low and white, hits like the snow tires of a heavy Ford pickup. It rolls over me slowly and waits for the weight to break, leaving again with the crunch of gravel and sleet. There are many things to love and cherish, and it is...
Rock, Paper, Cinema
A surreal noir.
The Forest of Ink & Skin
This essay addresses ideas around eco-storytelling & neurodiversity, while reflecting upon an immersive performance the author co-created in Tartu, Estonia in 2024, and tells the tale of a woman who must absolve her sins by tattooing the trunks of every tree in a forest.
The Annotated Kitab al-Azif
A queer Lovecraftian love story
Coffee Love and Curly Fries
Through a spiraling structure and stream of consciousness-style prose, a teenage boy grapples with his understanding of masculinity, love, and himself.
The Growth of a Nation
A speech on the greatest threat facing our country.
Mudman
Mudman follows a young man temporarily called Mickey attempting to escape his past and identity. But the past has a way of catching up, and in Mickey’s case, it may be particularly muddy…
In Defense of Wendy Cope, Gary Soto, Roisin Kelly, etc.
Writers are dearly in love with oranges. They’ve found metaphors in bits and peels, even in stems that grow increasingly along the sides of trees that hang low to the reader, easily pickable. What I’ve seen, and continue to see, is that there’s something about oranges...
A Kinder, Gentler Impaler
Substance is immaterial. Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, seeks an image makeover that appeals to mainstream society.
Saturn Devouring His Son
Two office workers at a tech company undergo an experimental procedure to eliminate hunger, and find themselves grappling with a hunger of a different kind.
On Working With Kids
Childhood is a surreal, terrifying, and beautiful concept. Children are real.
I Walked Through the Midnight Library and Saw the TV Glow
I was pretty active on Letterboxd last year. If you’re unfamiliar, Letterboxd is a social networking platform that allows people to rate, review, and catalog films. It pretty much functions exactly like Goodreads with a laughably bad search function to match....
In India, English Is Not Just A Language
My youngest brother, Adi, was yet again on his way to a corner store to buy some daily supplies for our home. Casually strolling down the street, a carry bag in his hands and his headphones plugged in, completely tuning out the world, he was stopped by a group of four...
The Horny Castrato
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.
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.”
Learning To Let Go
The air was light and filled with the smell of wild roses. Two teenage girls with small bindis on their forehead had the same pinkish hue on their cheeks as the roses they were picking. The cinematographer went closer to take a close-up shot of their faces. It...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jabberwock
A poem exploring the undertones of horror that exist if you really consider what the famous poem “The Jabberwocky,” is about.
a collection
I’ve been compiling many of my poems from old notebooks to create a book of life. Like a memoir but in poems. These are a few of the recent ones.
What Was Barbie Made For?Â
Where does the film, and by extension, the doll, fit into our discussions of feminism, capitalism, and nostalgia?
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.
The Menu: Beautiful Presentation… But Lacks Substance
“Let them eat McDonalds” says director, Mark Mylod, with one of Searchlight Picture’s newest star-studded original films, The Menu.
Rainfall
A short fictional piece in which two people debate about whether a painting of the real world is of any merit or significance.
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.
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.
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