paper umbrella coconut

Feliz Navidad | Steve Glickman

It’s Christmas Eve in 2005 and I am packed and ready to go to Puerto Vallarta. My suitcase waits by the front door. My flight leaves at 9AM on Christmas Day and I cannot wait to get out of Chicago. It’s been an awful year. I broke up with my boyfriend of seven years and I’ve been in a fog ever since. I lost my mojo, my school spirit, my ability to sleep through the night. I almost lost my job […]

cups candles

Bruja | Nestor Gomez

I was 12 years old, playing tag with my two sisters at home in the backyard. When I talk about my sisters I am referring to my biological sister who was one year older than me, and my cousin who had been living with us for about five years, who we considered not our cousin, but our sister. Suddenly, our game of tag was interrupted by loud voices coming from inside the house. Then the noises turned to screams – […]

horseshoe

The Most exciting Game of Your Life//or Those Weird Wild Years You Would Rather Forget | Morgan McNaught

1. The most exciting game of your life. You live in a basement apartment. They call it a garden apartment. When it comes down to it, it’s a fucking basement. It feels very Freudian// in a bad way//to be living in a basement. You don’t know this yet//About Freud. About basements. This is not your first garden apartment. Since she’s died – you’ve had three. It is the most lovely garden apartment you’ve had. It has a tub and a […]

Cruise Control | Adrian Gonzales

The muffler could be heard from down the street and I knew he was here. It was a little past midnight when I snuck out of my house. Matthew picks me up in his jet-black 1965 Mustang Convertible. I snap on my seatbelt, ready for our next adventure, and he asks me, “Do you cruise?” Cruise? I had to take a second to think, Hmmm…do I “cruise”? Matt was 27 and I was 17 because I don’t know, daddy issues, but […]

Good Girls Are | Britt Julious

I hope Nicole is okay. I hope the weight of being this age at this time doesn’t crush her. I hope her life is easy (much easier than mine) and that she is ascending. Because me, her doppelgänger, was descending, and quickly. “You look really familiar,” people tell me when I’m in public. The longer I live within city limits, the more often I hear this. Whereas at first I assumed it was something white people said to black people […]

The Apple Bottom Falls Far From the Tree | Ginnie Redmond

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri with my mom, dad, three brothers, and two sisters. My parents wanted nothing less than the Midwestern dream for their Irish-Catholic brood: quarterbacks and prom kings for sons, dance team captains and homecoming queens for daughters. They dreamed of future lawyers, soccer moms, grandchildren galore. And who’s to blame them? Who wouldn’t want what’s best for their kids? Unfortunately for my mom, I didn’t fit into her idea of Midwest perfection. While my […]

A Tale of Two Women | Mare Swallow

In 1995, an unknown writer published a book of self-help musings. This book contained 365 entries–one for each day of the year–and promised to “transform your life and help you excavate your authentic self.” It extolled the joys of simple pleasures, like “the smell of fresh laundry” and “porridge with warm apple sauce.” It promised that by appreciating the simple things in life, you would have “more.” The author doesn’t say more what. Just more.

Burn Shit/Dance A Lot | C. Russell Price

On the nights I feel most in control of my gender, I wear thick eyeliner and paint my nails and let my blue mane down. I sit in a dive bar and watch the men stare. I listen to whispered what-is-thats and don’t-they-know-this-isn’t-a-gay-bars. Sometimes, a man will put his drink near mine and look at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, like how a dog looks at food when it hits the floor, before I say, “YOOOOO—are you gonna […]

A Life in Politics | Jeffery Schultz

I was eight years old when I entered politics. I ran for Class Delegate to the Student Activity Committee. On Election Day, I wore a dress shirt and put gel in my hair. In a two-way race I came in second, which made me the Alternate. I thought of it like being the Vice President. In the event that the Delegate could not carry out his duties, I would assume office. Coming in second did not disappoint me. It was […]