the line: Issue nO. 3

Issue nO.3 of the magazine was supposed to be about looking at the line. Award winning photographer, Wyatt Gallery, inspired us with eloquent visual images in his studies of the aftermath of hurricanes and tsunamis. We began wondering about how art identifies the lines between destruction and survival. We...

poem: Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Starter Marriage With love, there is the bright, white, flashbulb moment, sealed with a kiss, of course, and that marks the slick second in which a marriage begins. But, friend, you and I have been tied to each other hips for years without cake, or bouquet, and definitely no kiss. Friendship, a high school...

poems: Roger Bonair-Agard

Defense – 1988 Milt is chillin’ / Gizmo’s chillin what more can i say, Top Billin’…         Audio Two I. pickup The drug dealers wear brightly colored velour sweatsuits open to the waist. Thick gold rope chains hang past their sternums ...

poems: J.W. Basilo

Anointing the Hand     for Gabrielle Bouliane, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, anyone who has ever gotten up Often when a fighter sees his own blood, the fight is over. A mere trickle off the nose a slow knockout, he has begun his descent to the turf, waving for no more. The pacifist and I are...

photo essay: Regine Romain

AYITI: REACHING HIGHER GROUND “They are in many respects a fine looking people. There is about them a sort of majesty. They carry themselves proudly erect as if conscious of their freedom and independence.” Frederick Douglas, Former United States Minister to the Republic of Haïti, Lecture on Haïti,...

fiction: Rohin Guha

We Sat Around For a While & Talked About Eyjafjallajökull 1. We sat around for a while and talked about Eyjafjallajökull. The 5 train was stalled somewhere between Union Square and Grand Central and it was 3:28 Saturday morning. My breath reeked of vodka and French Fries. The girl sitting next to me...

poems: Victoria McCoy

A Name for This 1 I used to buy that homeless man coffee—the salty breath of Venice on our necks, he, cradling the toothbrush he claimed an angel down the boardwalk gave him. 2 The halos on the ancient Roman statues are not in fact halos, but an early...

the playlist: For Queer Kids Who Consider Suicide (when the hate is too much)

Track 1: Feminism Is For Everybody by bell hooks Though this book isn’t explicitly about being queer, bell hooks’s ideas really are valuable for anyone trying to make a space for themselves in a society that is often unwelcoming, if not hostile. Her argument is simple: Though feminism has gotten the...

fiction: Lara Stapleton

New I wondered if it was the light that muted our colors. The sun doesn’t shine as brightly onto our streets, and so I can’t get the same satisfaction in New York, my home. In New Orleans, I had found myself experiencing little highs all day. I wandered around in that damn heat, looking at little...

photo essay: Ocean Morisset

HAITI IN THE NEW MILLINIEUM In a six year period, Haiti has been ravaged by two natural disasters. In 2004 Hurricane Jeanne ripped through the coastal city of Gonaives, killing thousands. Then, on January 12, 2010, Haiti sustained a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that crippled the capital city of Port-au-Prince, ...

poem: Corrina Bain

How the Corpse Was Known I came into all this assuming you’d just treat me the way I wanted without ever having to explain what I needed. This time, I won’t be so vague.    - Ryan Jenkins in an email to Jasmine Fiore, weeks before her murder. Surprisingly, your given name....

poems: Tristan Silverman

Bed Before War I want to tell you about the bed they were asleep in. I want to say they slept as if nothing could wake them. Like they, too, were part of the modern world. As if war were just a draft of wind, a stray animal that runs through your yard. I want to tell you these things, but I know very little...