Poetry & Fiction

When the Aid Stopped: A Poetic Chronicle of DOGE’s Human Cost, Part 2

A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON

Already—before the recent changes—one of the things living in France had taught me was a story of America’s greatness, as seen from the outside. The way France’s newscasters follow our elections with careful explanations of the electoral college and graphics showing states turning blue or red. The way the world follows each pronouncement uttered by our leaders, because those pronouncements will affect that world, the world outside America that doesn’t vote for U.S. leaders but lives in those leaders’ downstream impact.p>

When the Aid Stopped: A Poetic Chronicle of DOGE’s Human Cost, Part 1

A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON

Modern Junk: A Poem

POEM BY VAGRANT MOON
PHOTO BY JC JOHNSON

There Was Nothing Wrong

POEM BY RACHEL JOY WELCHER
PHOTO BY EJ BOWMAN

To the People, a Dandelion

POEM BY MADISON ANDERSON

The sorrow of a non-Jewish woman touring Auschwitz

Firefall

POEM AND DIGITAL IMAGE BY GLORIA NEWTON

After the fires in Maui, Hawaii

Rosemary

FICTION BY KAITLYN MCCRACKEN

Looking at the wren hopping surprisingly close to her shoe, the girl had the same thought she often had when thinking about birds:

My goal in life is to have the confidence of a Manhattan pigeon.

Except that this was not Manhattan, and this was not a pigeon. Alex (that was the girl’s name) remembered reading London travel articles the week before and finding an article about above-ground train stations using trained hawks to ward off pigeons.

Where Dreams Die

FICTION BY DENISE CAMPBELL
IMAGES BY KAMI RICE and JC JOHNSON

“Wake up, Indigo! Time to start this journey you come here for.”
Aunt Mercie’s singsong call rushed in with the sound of the rooster crowing. We woke to a washed-out, downcast morning. But by the time Salome and I loaded the crocus sacks of groceries into the back of the pickup, the sun had put in an appearance. She’d landed in Kingston two nights before and had to make the trip with me to visit my sisters—Samira in Bog Walk and Claudine in Lional Town. Salome and I had grown up on the same street in Norbrook, in the hills of Kingston, and gone to high school together before attending universities in different parts of the world. Even so, we were bonded friends for life in the way Catholic high school compatriots often are.

Who Am I?

POEM BY GHAZAL AL-MADADHA

The Lion and Me

FICTION BY JANE POTTHAST

This short fictional work was originally written for a course on ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is a Greek term for a literary description of a work of art. Whether in poetry, fiction, or criticism, vividly describing a particular painting or statue can serve as poignant subject matter for a writer or as a device to emphasize the writer’s own themes. In the following text, I utilize a historical, fictive voice to meditate on Yale Gallery’s Lion Relief from the Processional Way (562 B.C.). I imagine the relief from the perspective of someone who might have been present at the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, a wonder of the ancient world originally lined with fierce, gold lions.