I watch the waves—

They come to rest on the very same shore that answers to two different
names—

The waves begin in a place without nations—
        They rise and reach towards me—
                                                     Then a metal line breaks them in two.

Read this poetic dispatch from Alfredo Aguilar about Friendship Park, and the impact of borders on human relationships. 

“ For a moment I was a failed skip of stone
sunk into the river for a moment I was the river
purling in long last shadows of September
for a moment I was a skinny grizzly climbing
from a beer can”

Check out Matt W. Miller’s reading of his poem “Autobiography” on our website now:

Do you have place-based poems, essays, or short stories that you’re hoping to publish? This is your chance! Take a look at our submission guidelines and send us your best work! 

NATHAN MCCLAIN | The Flowers

| At the Park, a Boy’s Birthday

SARA ELKAMEL | Instructions for getting around a desert

BRIAN SIMONEAU |  Each morning I get up I die a little

Keep reading

If you have to die somewhere (and you do), why not up there—in forward motion, encased in this treasured, suspended place, between being and becoming, then and now, A and B, here and there, below and above, above and beyond, self and other, a space that exists nowhere else, the space of your greatest advances, where you’ve most loved the gift of the world and the life it gave you? 

Sarah Van Bonn’s essay “How To Cure Your Fear of Flying” uses the fear of airplane catastrophes to wrestle with a deeper sense of dread that comes with the passage of time. 

In all the early photos of my life, you are wearing a long skirt. It is pleated, with an elastic waistband, patterned with purple and red Japanese flowers. I imagine you purchased it from one of the consignment stores in Lincoln Square, their window displays nothing more than dresses and shirts hung on latticed wood wound with fake ivy. 

Listen to the recording of Rowan Beaird reading an excerpt from her Issue 17 fiction piece “Trousseau.” 

These wafts, imperceptible by the extant senses,

disappear when we look for them, 

just as the Andromeda galaxy spinning towards us 

fades into a cloud when we search for its guiltless face. 

A “cosmic pile-up.” Four billion years to live.

Rising sophomore Sofia Belimova brings a poetic dispatch that dwells on life at Amherst College.