by Esihle Lupindo PROLOGUE Sex is a vast language in which we’re all fluent across continents, dialects, cultures, borders, time, and sexualities. A universal language requiring neither translation nor translator. Sex is full of contradictions: so ubiquitous yet so private, almost as if it doesn’t exist. Despite any amount of danger or restrictive policing, it can…
Tag: mixtape
An Echo of Voices
by Anathi Jongilanga Vumani comes to her often these days. His siblings are away: one is married, somewhere in eNgcobo, and three are at work in Kimberley, Cape Town, Jo’burg, and the money they send home hardly covers a month’s groceries anymore. Somewhere along the way, he loses his cell phone, therefore the direct line…
The Somewhat Accidental Death of an Academic
by Patrick Duane To Whom It May Concern, There are a few things that I wish to disclose. It’s true that I once told people I was Portuguese. I did this only because my father used to say, “I think our Irish ancestors mixed in with the Portuguese.” I took this to mean my great…
Dear Father
by TJ Benson I have been reading the Bible again, from the New Testament, to know how it feels now that I have abandoned the church. I read about the birth of Jesus and wondered about the shooting star that led the Magi to the town of his birth. As a child, I used to think…
Editor’s Note | Danger, or: Speak Anyway
Dear Reader, I cannot in good faith begin this letter without acknowledging the war on Palestine and her people. I cannot publish a folio on issues of danger without acknowledging that there’s yet to be a ceasefire, there’s yet to be a serious account of what it means to watch the world burn on our…
Recipe for Marital Disaster
by Jill Michelle Level: Easy Total Time: 11 years Active: 5 Years Yield: 1 Divorce Ingredients:2 babies lost at 21-weeks1 father with early-onset Alzheimer’s1 father at 90, bedridden in living room hospital bed1 14-year-old witnessing all of this2 depressed spouses23.5 daily hours of silence between them0 meaningful topics addressed0 snuggling0 sex Directions: Fuck if I…
Palestine made me Muslim again
by Atia Sattar but it’s less a returnmore a re-calling because when I was bornthe Azaan was whispered in my earand still echoes within because I tuned out Muslim at eighteento the boom of hijacked airplanescolliding with steel, untrainedin mindful listening, untrained in self-love because “I was raised Muslim”wasn’t cutting it everlike I could just…
Editor’s Note | RAGE
Anger is loaded with information and energy. Audre Lorde Dear reader, This issue seeks to perform a chromatography of anger, showcasing its intersections with other emotions and social dispositions. We attempt to defend & redefine anger that may otherwise be shunned/stunted in “polite” society. How often must we restrain our rage to accommodate the “legitimate”…
Editor’s Note | Place
Dear Reader, Often, our encounters with place can be misconstrued simply as background or setting. This issue seeks to redefine place in multitudes. Place, in this issue, is a rich texture of landscapes. As you peruse this issue, you will find yourself in mosques, tea shops, rivers, wild fires, filipino supermarkets, classrooms, garden soil, homelands,…
Editor’s Note | Punk
It’s rare to find writing that convincingly represents the world of punk—of show-going and show-playing; of earnest and eager youth; how formative and life-giving it can be to sing and dance in a room of crowded people—but the pieces published in this issue engage with music in a way that feels reliable, lived in. Jennifer…