Introduction to Special Issue | Amalia Clarice Mora
The theme of this special issue was inspired, in part, by a late night Google search a few years ago. Amidst growing conversation in the United States and the world over about sexual violence and domestic abuse, I lay awake thinking about growing up a girl. The leering, catcalling, groping. Being taken advantage of at a party, being valued for beauty or ridiculed for ugliness. Worshiped for our parts, reduced to our things, to things ourselves. Dreading the meeting where our opinions are undermined, the birthdays that mark us as past an expiration date, the alleyways or relationships that leave
Nonfiction Contest
Nonfiction
I’m five years old, barefoot in the backyard with my dad, picking tomatoes. They grow up the thin wire cage like they’re reaching for something.
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Shelly was nineteen years old, and she did her best to get by. Blond hair and a cherry vine tattoo; her family called her Treasure.
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A seat at a table. It’s a foldable chair. The kind that comes in beige or gray. The kind that everyone will help stack on
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It’s cold in Norway this time of year and the nights are short. The sun goes down just before 11PM and comes up again at
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Every Monday morning we gather on the sagging sofas, some of us crosslegged, holding cushions to our chests, and report on the week’s cases.
Read MoreFiction
The first letter arrived less than a week after Ed’s burial. Martha recognized the postmark: Bluffton, South Carolina. She also knew it was Ed who had handwritten her name and address
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Once they stopped chanting and fell silent, once they left her lying supine on the floor again, none of the girls ever tried testing their powers beyond this.
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electrocardiogram / don’t look at the line that flattens / without leaping first, still sleeping / ahead of
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They say finch is in the attic running out of songs to sing / tracking circles on sun-dusted
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Among the yucca & buggy whips the desert thrums with domestic bliss. They set up store window dummies
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Replacing my veins
Or so I could have believed
From the lupine-light way
You hid your skin within my skin
Beyond the off-white metal door
down the hall past the electric chair
and the dank room where men use
the flying
In a country prone
to teaching royalty
above all
the hunt,
I’ll throw in my own
two cents
Charisma is an effigy that burns
bright behind bars,
fueled by shame.