Santa Marta
by M.C. Jia
You know what, I’m tired of fighting
Modernity is mostly good
There
Are you happy
It’s like, who would choose to live this way
If they could be a hunter-gatherer
But like
No one just “gets” to be a hunter-gatherer
Anymore
That way of life
Requires some serious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . square footage
So now we have VR porn
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful
(Who among us has not
Contemplated selling feet pics)
But sometimes living under empire
Is an exercise in patient half-smiling
As ugly men insist
Yet again
That you were born feeling like this
Like 1987 bestseller “The Chalice and the Blade”
Being lampooned by the press as “illegitimate”
Or “flat-out bonkers”
For insisting
Something like feminism
Might have predated war
Listen
At this point
Is it even worth doing
If it’s not gonna be lampooned
Can we even afford
To be unlampoonable
In these fucking conditions
I sit
In this distant country
Sweating through these sailor’s breeches
A sweating glass of corozo
The colour of my niece’s crayon heart
As a band of playa-dwellers
Traipses up the beach
To play us honeymoon songs
O honey
We tried it your way
We tried to save things
Through the language of economics
I’m just saying
What if, for once
We rode language itself
Like a cowgirl
Rides the beast to its glorious knees
And emerges sweatslick and panting
In the coliseo of the now
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Photo Credit: the author
M. C. Jia is a Chinese-Canadian artist, performer and ethnographer based in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Adroit Journal, Arc Poetry, Vinyl, Room, and The Panacea Review. She was a finalist for the CV2 Foster Poetry Prize and the Urmy/Hardy Poetry Prize and the winner of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire College Poetry Contest. By day, she runs IRID.space, a design school focused on uncommon approaches to civic problems.
Website: cargocollective.com/mixue
by Greg Santos
It’s that in-between season again—when leaves rustle underfoot, pumpkins start appearing on stoops, and change is visible everywhere you look. The days grow shorter, the nights stretch longer, and the world feels charged with the possibility of transformation — fittingly, the theme of this issue.
Creative non-fiction by Lauren Barbato
Wear your best Forever 21 dress, the one the feminist housewife from Beverly Hills called posh, to the office every Thursday
Creative non-fiction by Raena Shirali
I don’t remember the first lie I told, the same way I don’t have a first memory—no first impression of my surroundings vignetted, no rose-tinted arrival at consciousness.
Comic by Annabelle Olendzki
Annabelle Olendzki, less formally known as “Moowsie” online, is a queer comic artist based in Western Massachusetts.
Comic by stef lenk
stef lenk is an illustrator and writer whose work has appeared in Brick Literary Journal, This Magazine, Rue Morgue magazine and Broken Pencil magazine amongst others.
Fiction by Anne Baldo
“Every good girl has daddy issues,” Maddie says, gulping from a two-litre jug of No Name cranberry juice because she has a terrible urinary tract infection.
Fiction by Anthony Portulese
Nothing exhilarates me more than the friction of hairy legs in high-heeled boots.
Fiction by Becky Petterson
Sally brought a seashell for her first show and tell. It was small and curved towards itself like a cupped hand.
Fiction by Leah Mosier-Farquharson
Allen told her that accidents didn’t exist, that everything happened for a reason and any mistake was at least subconsciously accounted for.
Fiction by Natalie Kishchuk
Trulie felt the bracelet break, its relinquishment, pale pink beads dropping from her wrist onto the flannels she had piled as a pillow, pooling into the hollow made by the weight of her head.
Photography by Ben Erlandson
David Orr explains, ‘Bioregionalism’ is the name given to our attempts to integrate the ecological potential of an ecosystem into our institutions.
Photography by Emem Etti
This photo series meditates on the devouring nature of love, lust, and yearning. As intimacy deepens between oneself and another, The Self, as a fixed whole, dissolves.
Photography by Gage Michael Wheatley
These images were taken over a summer spent walking through the places where people used to be, or where they only barely remain.
Poetry by Aris Keshav
It feels good to get things done. In four hours of
television the doctors save eight lives
Poetry by Foster Gareau
The time is
now,
as usual.
Poetry by Grace Lau
Phagocytosis (n): from the Ancient Greek φαγεῖν (phagein) 'to eat’ and κύτος (kytos) 'cell.’
Poetry by Jaspreet Singh
Darwish isn’t born yet
Poetry by M.C. Jia
You know what, I’m tired of fighting
Modernity is mostly good
Poetry by Sandra Sylvia Nelson
Scotland is fighting period
poverty by providing free sanitary
products in schools and libraries.
Poetry by Tolu Oloruntoba
From the entropic raft of my body
I surmise the heat death of the universe.
Translation by Dawson Ford Campbell
I am a sieve. A medium-sized strainer picked up at Renaissance, with a weave that’s tighter in places, a rim that’s lightly rusted.
Translation by Sunny Doyle
Martha died on September 1st, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was 29 years old, the last of her species: the passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius.
by Aderes Z.
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers’ Contest
First Place - Grades 5 & 6
Jjjjjjjjj! Tik tik tik! Ding! And into the fridge I went. I bet you’re wondering why I’m in the fridge. That’s an easy question to answer. I’m a cupcake, well more like a muffin right now, I don’t have my frosting on yet.
by Anastasia Maria I.
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers’ Contest
Second Place - Grades 5 & 6
Le soleil brillait haut dans le ciel et aucun nuage ne risquait de cacher son beau visage d’or. C’était vers midi quand une colonie de fourmis marchait en chantant dans le bois.
by Naveen Dosaj
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers’ Contest
Honourable Mention - Grades 5 & 6
June 6th, 2022, Rouyn-Noranda, 6:45pm. Gold medal game of the Quebec Little League provincial baseball tournament. Our hero steps up at-bat with nobody on base, with no outs and a tied match.
by Nona Morakabaty
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers’ Contest
Honourable Mention - Grades 5 & 6
Natation avec nations attends son attention actuel sincérement actuellement sensation avec sentiment mélé dans l’obscurité de l’obscure dans le sanglot de mon couer
by Matti Gonzalez-Idan
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers’ Contest
First Place - Grades 3 & 4
Le forêt s’endort… mais pas ses prédateurs. Parmi eux, un loup pas comme les autres. Un loup-garou détective.
by Sarah Israel and Adèle Menache
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers Contest
Second place - Grades 3 & 4
Il était une fois, trois jeunes filles, une nommée Camille, une nommée Emma, et une nommée Zoé.
by Cordelia Carrier-Sydor
Roslyn and Max Margles Young Writers Contest
Honourable Mention - Grades 3 & 4
It was a beautiful, summer day in Space Serpent Town. The sun was shining and the streets were busy.
Cover art by Melody Pineda, featuring photography by Savannah Dodd, Mia Huang, Esther Mathieu, and David Swartz
Mixed media is a means to express my relationship to identity, otherness and marginalization. Through collecting and interlocking images, weaving becomes a tool and symbol for intersecting realities.