From my desk, I watch her turn the pages. She is meticulous, each touch / feather-light and exact in her dissection.

the world ran out of people / but we’re still here / we do normal things / take the subway home to / each other hold hands / when no one’s looking

At age four, I used to secretly squeeze through the cracks in our backyard fence to go and explore the world on the other side.

‘The Human Trap‘ portrays the failure of the world to reconcile the concepts of evolution and globalization.

This series of hybrid gag panels and short prose is modeled after mid-century children’s comics like Casper, Little Dot, Little Eva, and Little Lulu, but stars “Kayla,” a self-portrait character whose blank eyes and somewhat sad, harried expression never changes.

In the fall of 2012, I moved to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Artist, designer, and teacher Katie Reigner tackles our fourth issue with two pieces of musical poetry accompanied by a watercolor illustration.

…there is no literary character more similar to the President-elect than Napoleon Bonaparte as depicted by Tolstoy in War and Peace.

I heard in a Black boy town / there was a pool filled / with red / and the white people

The first time I heard about the recording of President-elect Donald Trump bragging about his demeaning treatment of women like it was a badge of honor, I no longer wanted my boyfriend of five years to touch me.

The morning after the election, I agonized about how to talk with my first-year students about the outcome.

The sky was a color / she loved most — / the holy blue / before Eid mornings.

Day 1: I woke and opened my eyes to a quiet morning, trying to feel if it was the end of an era.

I was born like anyone else. Mom and Dad loved me like anyone else’s parents loved them. Like anyone else, after school, ran from skinheads.

The night of the second presidential debate, I called my mother. It wasn’t supposed to be a political call;