Issue #3
Poetry
Edited by Diana Kamau, Sofia Cabaj-Guerra, Emily Baird
“KOREAN ME”
by Stacey Park
Stacey Park is a Korean-Canadian writer from Vancouver, B.C. but living in southern California at the moment. Her work has appeared in The Underwater Railroad, Cortland Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, Portland Review, and elsewhere. She is also co-editor-in-chief at Foothill Poetry Journal.
Twitter: @stassmaster
“On-screen Imperfections”
by Roosha Mandal
Roosha Mandal is a medical student who runs a poetry instagram titled 'gxrlhood.' She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in Creative Writing and Biology, and her work centers around her experiences working at the intersection of urban health and street medicine.
“What Do I Owe”
by Juanita Rey
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in Canada for five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.
“Hurricane”
by Frances Koziar
Frances Koziar has published 80+ pieces of prose and poetry, and is seeking an agent for diverse NA fantasy novels and children’s fairy tales (PBs). Her poetry has appeared in 25+ literary magazines including Acta Victoriana, Wards, and Coffin Bell. She is a young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, and she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Author website: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author
“A Mosquito Talks to Another Mosquito”
by Ulises Alaniz, Translated by Ulises Alaniz and Lauren Schenkman
Translators’ Statement: These two poems come from Retrato Hablado (“Spoken Portrait”), an unpublished collection-in-progress. In this collection, Alaniz explores the tensions between speaking and silence, absence and presence, in the context of historical and current political violence in Nicaragua. In "A Mosquito Talks to Another Mosquito," Alaniz critiques Nicaraguans' hollow, almost touchingly naive perpetuation of class distinctions and paradigms imposed by Spanish and American colonizers.
Alaniz is bilingual, with Spanish as his first language; Schenkman is a bilingual American—her mother is from Nicaragua—with English as her first language. Alaniz and Schenkman translate poetry as a team, talking through nuances of connotation, testing out rhythms, and finding sneaky ways to make the essence of Nicaraguan cultural references somehow palpable to non-Nicaraguans. In 2019, their translations of five poems by Nicaraguan poets, including a poem by Alaniz, were published online with Tin House.
“Ruined Pears”
by Hayley Stoddard
Hayley Stoddard lives in Colorado, and is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree. She began writing at a young age, and has been inspired by such writers as Billy Collins, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, and Leonard Cohen. Her work has been seen in or is upcoming in several publications, including Parley Publishing, Oberon, After the Pause, Eris+Eros, Sad Girls Club Lit, Beyond Words Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, and Eunoia Review.
“I Don’t Suppose”
by M. Kolbet
These poems look at the unquestioned limitations of indifference, especially to people who don't fit the dominant culture.
“Spring Comes Around” and “Notions”
by Cassandra Moss
Cassandra Moss was born in Manchester, England. She studied English with Film at King’s College London and subsequently worked in the film industry and then as an English language teacher. After doing an MPhil in Linguistics at Trinity College Dublin, she now works as a linguist and lives and writes by the sea. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Posit, The Passage Between, Sunspot Lit, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Kairos Literary Magazine, The Bangalore Review, The Closed Eye Open, New York Quarterly, Causeway Lit, Spectra Poets, Drunk Monkeys, Interpret Magazine, and House Mountain Review.
Twitter: @CassandraPMoss
Facebook: Cassandra Moss
Instagram: cassandra_moss
“In the Year Without Broadway”
by Nick Stanovick
Nick Stanovick is a writer and educator living in Brooklyn. He is an alumnus of Temple University and Auburn University, an International Poetry Slam Champion, and the winner of the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Prize. His poems have appeared in Spillway, Vinyl, The Academy of American Poets, Ghost City Review, and Drunk In a Midnight Choir among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at Queens College in New York City.
Twitter/Instagram: @n_stano
“Scientists Disprove the Theory that Monarch’s are Distasteful to birds”
by Nick Stanovick
Nick Stanovick is a writer and educator living in Brooklyn. He is an alumnus of Temple University and Auburn University, an International Poetry Slam Champion, and the winner of the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Prize. His poems have appeared in Spillway, Vinyl, The Academy of American Poets, Ghost City Review, and Drunk In a Midnight Choir among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at Queens College in New York City.
“Auto-Biography in Dark Matter”
by Ankoor Patel
Ankoor Patel is from Vallejo, California. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Death Rattle’s OROBORO literary journal, Santa Fe Writers Workshop Quarterly, and elsewhere.
“A Questioning Nature”
by Lily Rose Kosmicki
My poems are collage pieces, because I use phrases, experiences, sentiments repurposed from childhood diaries and notebooks. New meaning is arranged by recomposing these fragments, the poems are about love, which is the basis for both justice and upheaval.
“after leaving my husband”
by Samn Stockwell
I think if composition nudges towards the truth of something, it necessarily breaks down what came before.
“Dissection”
by Sandie Seeger
Sandie Seeger is a writer living with schizophrenia. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Oddball Magazine and elsewhere. Dr. Seeger’s writing explores the pervasive myths society has placed upon the neurodiverse.
“Foreign Language”
by Debasis Tripathy
Debasis Tripathy lives in Bangalore. His recent work features in Mad Swirl, Rogue Agent, Vayavya, Leon Lit, Eunoia Review & elsewhere. Occasionally, he tweets at @d_basis.
“The Heist”
by Ardon Shorr
Ardon is writing poems about metabolism – drawing nutrients from breaking down systems. This is his first publication.