June 2002, Before It was early in June when the storm hits us. It didn’t do much damage, besides ripping away one of the biggest branches from the maple tree. Just a week after we moved into this house, our neighbours told us about that half-dead, century-old...
the words fell off my tongue like the filling from a tangbao skin inflections leaking out the sides spilling broth down my chin my throat burned but i swallowed the sound. ...
Telemachus is not the only fatherless boy in Ithaca. When Odysseus left to go to war, he took the men of Ithaca with him, and now their sons are old enough to eye his palace and his wife. Telemachus does not want one of his...
Remember running from the top of the hill telling stories about skeletons in the forest, Years later you buried yours there and I never knew All I had was a pencil sharpener shaped like a house and a spelling bee trophy that didn’t belong to me What did I do to...
Rose Macaulay’s poem “The Shadow” explores the experience of civilian uncertainty, trauma, and helplessness during World War I aerial bombings, focalizing the interiority of civilians. Impressionist techniques of onomatopoeia and sparse diction elucidate trauma’s impact on civilians, marking their distress as inarticulable. The anticipatory dread of...
Diasporic identity is scarcely singular, yet Gianna Patriarca’s poetry collection Italian Women and Other Tragedies and Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story collection How to Pronounce Knife share particularly striking similarities in their portrayals of diasporic mothers and daughters. The domestic space of home shapes the shared...
The release of Beyoncé Knowles’s sixth studio album, Lemonade, signified a turning point in the conception of Black female identity within popular music. Described as a “shot heard around the world” by scholar Zeffie Gaines, the multimedia experience of Lemonade serves as an ode to...
It's not so much the full bottles As it is the empty glass. A broken promise Stale and sticky on the crooked coffee table. I’ll never drink whiskey again. It’s not so much the noxious assault in the doorway As it is the broken flag on the mailbox. Even when empty, I pushed...
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Sunday night might always be heavy. It might always remind us of every night we spent convincing everyone else they were worthy of healing, every instance bringing rise to the nights that we didn’t want to live. Maybe all...