Milk Shop
Amid clamoring customers, a woman reaches for literature. A simple, mundane space of service, imbued with hope, desire, and imagination
Lobster and potato bread
Paired with gorgeous photography, a poetic new short story about the emergence of capital in a communist Cuba
My Temple
A mixed-media piece that probes against society's tendency to put a price on female beauty
DEAR COMMISSAR
The poem that's had enough. Enough of the "herbal tea of change rhetoric," enough of hypocritical politics, enough of government-induced suffering
Kulela
Who is the servant and who is the master? A photo series exploring the systemic exploitation of Black women’s domestic and reproductive labor, rejecting the mammy caricature
Deliver
A girl bruised by heartbreak. A taxi driver with unsaid prayers. One gives the other money, the other something intangible. Vamika Sinha's new poem explores a moment of mutual transaction
LETTER TO AMERIKA
A poem addressed to "war cooked in labs and ideologies hatched in test tubes," people "stripped of song," and foreign cultures recycled in ivory towers. Mbizo Chirasha dreams of a land of freedom that is actually free
Right This Way
Morgan Kelly's welding work presents metal in a form that does not match its intended function. In this series, Kelly's works examine the consumer-service relationship and the burden of capitalism's demands on service workers
The Liftman
"Tucked into one corner of the small lift, he leaned against the back wall and diligently pressed the buttons all day." A short story set in Kolkata, India about a schoolgirl's growing awareness of a service worker
Patriarchal Woman
Chilean artist Matías Alvial's artwork interrogates the ways in which the eyes of a patriarchal society see women: as domestic and sexual servants
Machine Learning
"I forced a bot to formulate a romance novel blurb from the data set of the times I felt most myself." A new prose poem exploring the cyberverse and how it formulates fluid genders and selves
A Note from the Editors: Issue 32
Le Naufrage
Lebanese artist Maria Kassab pairs the roiling of the sea and its emotions with the tension, stillness, and haunting absences of still photography in this visual arts series
Flora Reform
Where do we gather to pray for peace? Lauren Peter’s new poem questions marijuana-related incarceration through disparate imagery
The Prison Before My First Name
What you call me, what you name me, can be my prison. A passionate poem about a transgender experience in Thailand
The Colors Drained Out of Lives of Migrants
महानगर के प्रवासी मज़दूर बने कैदी| When livelihood becomes a prison. Jodhpur-based artist Shilpa Mridul’s “The Colors Drained out of Lives of Migrants” draws on ancient Indian print design to address the India of today
Three Poems
Howie Good writes of a utopia we should question, probe, and perhaps even strip of its title. Evoking images of modernity and capitalism, Good’s writing is both familiar and alarming
Duplex of Silence
Written after Jericho Brown’s “Duplex,” Aathma Nirmala Dious’s new poem is a poignant take on how silence is a dangerous form of confinement
Finding Bright
Are you really where you hoped you’d be? “Finding Bright” is a haunting series of how complex trauma becomes an ankle weight as the artist Jaina Cipriano transitions from childhood to adulthood
Celdas
La violencia no es lineal, sino cíclica. In her photographic series, Alma Leiva uses a nomadic process to represent the violence, poverty, and political instability Central Americans face through their home country and experiences of migration