A digital space feat. poetry, art, nonfiction, interviews, and reviews by marginalized creators.
Jessie Knoles: i think the first thing i read of yours was when you submitted some poems to hobart and i got to read them and accept (!!!) them to the site. i really loved those poems [http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/mall-of-america]. how long have you been writing for? Francesca Kritikos: First of all, thanks so much for accepting […]
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You may stumble upon Alain Ginsberg if you’re trying to find Allen Ginsberg, but there’s no need to be disappointed by this poet mix-up. Alain’s writing is a melancholy autobiography of what it means to not only survive, but also to live, and how hard it can be for queer individuals to do the bare […]
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I had the honor of sitting down with Shey Rivera at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island to discuss her work as a poet, artist, curator, and director. You can read or listen below! Katie Clark: So I’m just going to start off by reading a few lines of your bio: Shey is the […]
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Can you talk about your background? How did you first get into illustration? I got into illustration as a kid, despite the fact that I went to an art school that was quite traditional and somehow uptight, I became interested thanks to the school library. I didn’t felt so interested in reproducing the great masters. […]
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My Own Private Idaho: Tuesday night at the New Beverly Cinema. Five-dollar double feature, don’t remember the second one. Gummy seats, sticky floor and nobody there but us (and the) creeps. You, in love with the girl who stood you up: The thrift shop dress and vintage nickname. Me, last minute sub, extra ticket— Footwork […]
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The West Oakland train stop; defunct and tagged standing sentry between a collapsed overpass and a neighborhood gone to shit. You hopped the chain-link easily and breezed across the hill and dale of broken concrete, the stubborn flora crowding up and in between; moving earth like tiny fault lines, smashing plates together, splicing ground to […]
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Whip egg whites, expectations, preheat an oven, carefully cultivate delicate friendships with belligerent drunks. Add laughter by the teaspoons, desperation by cups, and apathy in gallons. Freeze and thaw. Partially defrost. Chill for hours. Pour in buckets of sugar, cinnamon, precious time and effort. Fuck it up; do it over. Scrape off what sticks to […]
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Collapsed into you outside of baggage claim in Pittsburgh. We sandwiched at Primanti Bros. where you picked at the bread, said you were already home sick, jet lagged, but a promise was a promise and Pennsylvania had taken its toll on me; the ice kept on short circuiting the hot wires of my soul. You […]
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but i too wish to be the catcher in the rye when i grow up. and by that i mean i want to protect everyone that is not me want to place everyone else in a bubble away from brokenness. by this i mean that the world is broken and so am i, and i […]
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stretch the hours before giving in ignore the pounding / lump in my throat cross my eyes pretend it never happened suck it all up this is how i want to look i hold the sinking flesh with cusped hands see myself spread thin count how much it takes to burn an entire body / […]
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I miss the honey pooled under your neck. since when have I been spilling blood to get away from you. I talked to the trees until they screamed. that’s summer. we are born from dirt, with hidden wings. I am trying my best to drink the light. to dip under the sun’s blade and emerge […]
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All of my friends from California call on the same day and everyone I know has a reason to go back to Boston. A week ago I was next to you; there is no luxury in this retrospect. Today, I take two trains an hour to Brooklyn to hear people read in soft voices under […]
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I love temperate climates and love like them Never choosing indefinitely rain or snow or sun My interests include sex and politics Anything that is about desire and continually in need Since birth I have demanded attention I have never once owned grease I sit at the intersection of controversy and insatiability I do not […]
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laying in bed, contemplating gun ownership in a city in California, a reality that I hadn’t quite surmised he had scaled my balcony once before, asking me to open the door so that we could talk the appeal had left me open to talking, so I made my way downstairs, and unlocked the locks all […]
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When did you first begin painting? I first fell in love with painting after my parents took me to a van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when I was seven. Looking up at the thick colorful swirls of paint on his canvases—I was hooked. I wanted to make my own […]
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It’s the middle of summer now, but nothing has changed, I attend funerals like they’re parties, receive bad news like they’re just the rent I pay for living, look cancer in the face and then look away—being alive isn’t as much fun when you know what awaits you at the end, being alive isn’t as […]
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The post-Halloween wind comes in, bearing its chill and a raspy cigarette-torn voice. I feel its brush against the branches of our uselessly thin trees, hear its rough attempt at a tune. It has been years now since your death and you have remained silent. Only my own melodramatic mind can believe this voice is […]
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Trigger warning: child sexual abuse, homophobia Age 12: Their parents give them a promise ring inscribed with “True Love Waits,” to be worn on the ring finger until replaced by a marriage band. They wear it daily for a couple of years before forgetting about it in the back of a drawer only to find it […]
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PLAYTEST 1 We’re in your truck. This college radio station will deliver exposition when there’s exposition to give, but for now we’re listening to a two-hour rotation of Alanis Morissette b-sides. We’re off-roading as fast west as the world will load, we’re so young they haven’t even rendered our shadows yet. PLAYTEST 2 No one […]
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I guess maybe recently I have become rather distant Like how I stand in front of the door and listen before making my escape And the cataclysmic pounding of my heart reverberating off the walls of its cage quickly becomes more than I can bear as though it’s reminding me of some dark secret I didn’t […]
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we swing on a splintered porch bench, humming amidst the sticky humid mist of July. I try to sing a soft “you are my sunshine” but it comes out shrill. so I just shut up and pucker up for a pink plastic bendy straw. I swallow your lemonade, glowing yellow in a glass mason jar. […]
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On the road in July, the radio still playing the same songs. I mash the buttons for change when I glance over at the empty passenger seat, the old brown blotch of spilled coffee I never cleaned off. Stray moments of you keep stirring next to me on the highway: both of us antsy to […]
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atomic comets litter the ashen landscapes of my American dreams wish I may, wish, with all my might, for uranium-plutonium rocks to stay crystallized in the stars. no longer have to look up obituaries to find little boys’ and fat man’s smoldering tomb stones: they orbit through front-paged print like steely marble boulders. when I […]
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an atlas of cloudbursts a map of eclipses solar plexus snaps so easy underneath my hand song for the boy with dirty feet song for his bare torso running wet in the riverbed a fanged devil a widow’s peak jasmine and sage in a bowl for the altar a boy […]
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Five story drop to kill a man unless the man’s a motherfucker in which case give him ten just to be sure he won’t walk away. Raised in the shadow of Houston refineries, Emily Pinkerton currently lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an MFA candidate at San Francisco […]
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Can you talk about your interest in figures? Well, as most of my illustrations are about an experience I have had, I usually draw human forms to visualize an protagonist of the story I am trying to tell. My inspirations are sometimes friends, strangers or even figures from movies. I think in middle eastern countries […]
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The pink floor lamp was flickering behind my ear, the dirt was making terrains for summer ants on the plastic strips that we got from Ikea to cover the life-size window behind your couch, also from Ikea. There were stains of old, dried acrylics visible on various parts of your beat up couch from the […]
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Fair faced, you stand welcoming, the sun running its tongue roughly up and down the sides of your neck, leaving marks you swear would kill you in a different life. No longer sunburned, chasing the feeling like sheets against sandpaper in between your skin. Look at the road, she says, it’s painted with the same […]
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lavender from a paris souvenir shop resting on an empty windowsill facing east yet the large remainder of the room has the faint scent of a damp towel on the door’s back. piles of worn clothes gathering wrinkles on the teal, maroon, indigo striped comforter. reminders to use the chestnut drawers beneath the bed and […]
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when i can’t sleep i think about the night crust in your eyes in the morning when you wake up with your back to me and i don’t take that as an answer. i am a force i will roll you over i will make you love me in the shy breath of morning when […]
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after Richard Siken If you wanted to tell me something, I’m begging for it right now. I’ve been waiting in the bathroom but the mirror isn’t giving me anything new. You’ve told me this house is a body and this body is a home but I don’t know if I can believe anything you say. […]
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earthbound, i look upwards & see birds on flight, fleeing the scene of the crime. in another life i had wings, too. big & beautiful & blood-soaked, i could be God’s best messenger. i am working on a theory on love. in order to be lovable, you must first be unforgettable. this is why God […]
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i tell him that this mouth bites, he thinks i’m being kinky. i’m not. these marc jacobs purple lips are not for him, or for the man telling me i look damn good, they are not for the bartender i want to fuck and they are not for the ex lover i mistook for a […]
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swallowing mini beads from my fingerprint barefoot in sand and piss the true beach life her chest collapsed bus drivers held her feet to heaven downtown the Presbyterian lord caught fire in architecture angels’ wings lifted by the smoke […]
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Olivia Gatwood has been calling bullshit and educating through poetry for years now. She is a touring poet and educator, offering workshops on Title IX compliance, community building, and creative writing. Her first collection, New American Best Friend, was released in March. The work explores girlhood and memory, class and sexuality, place-making within and […]
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Where are you from? When did you begin making work? I used to live on the beach in Pacific Palisades, CA but will be relocating to Seattle in a month. Drastic change. I’ve been making art my whole life but I only started making it with serious intent in 2011. From that point, I only […]
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This is a story Hector told about someone he went to boot camp with: there was a guy Hector went to boot camp with who was an idiot. One time when they were lining up for inspection, this guy got yelled at because he had put his pants on backwards. He zipped them up and […]
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I was watching the day you became a poppy field on fire. I’m love-marked, impenetrable past the rueful mouth of shallow waters. Monkish silence doesn’t fit you, (Not my blue-eyed mirror who makes me ache from missing him) its depths will you leave you heavy and wrapped in plastic. I carry my razor wire hope […]
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Drive me drunk in your heart-shaped glasses and we can forget about who we were or when about the hurt we chewed on the lives we left before we decided to be mindless because thinking Never got us anywhere kind Cross my heart to believe you’re who you never were and you try your best […]
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1. I’ve been ghosting since the first grave 2. I found this unopened instructional videotape on how to do some pretty killer karate moves If this is how we fall in love, so be it I’m ready to be kicked in the face with a beam of light 3. The gnostics had a word for […]
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For best results, choose a prediction damaging fungus existing in plain sun hair tangled no cosmic layer of irony. For best results, close off or else walk through the pain walk there in a day your blue skirt, hips busting your awkwardness not enough to keep you away. Why did you say […]
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Once my best friend tripped on acid at 2AM at UC Berkeley with her boyfriend and she saw two black blobs attack each other when in reality some guy beat another guy over the head with a baseball bat and what is that supposed to mean except fuck reality and fuck everything that has to do with […]
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sometimes i want you to feel the way i felt as a teenager smoking weed in my closet afraid of being caught but knowing that wasn’t very likely (because my parents never noticed the smell of marijuana smoke) i also want you to keep me in your back pocket where i can sleep for several […]
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there’s a flood but it’s inside me. there’s a flood but it’s made mostly of sand. there’s a flood but you wouldn’t have named it that if you’d had the choice. whatever you call it now it’s still a flood. I’m calling you honey baby my sweetest darling and I’m getting flecks of glass all […]
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keeping in mind the winter i collect down comforters for frost, asphalt for rush hour, keeping the kettle on to bring flush back to flesh where bone meets bus stop. once pedestrian, i find posture between cumulus and chimney smoke, making an even ascent, like leavened bread. when breath gives way to brinkmanship i will […]
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What makes you want to create? Many things inspire me. I am rather sensitive by nature. Breathing makes me want to create. Observing the world around me. I have a line in a poem that says “my reason for writing is that the universe is incessantly inspiring me.” It’s who I am. I’m a creator. […]
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Where are you from? How did you begin your painting practice? I’m from Northfield Minnesota, a lovely small town less than an hour south of the Twin Cities. I had the great fortune of being born into a family of artists. My parents are potters and my dad is also a high school art teacher […]
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We planted a beating heart beneath the floorboards to remind us of what it sounds like to be human. For the days when I take aim at your soul for making a mistake. For the days when you do the same. We are hypocrisies. I’ll ask forgiveness for the same sin I chastise you for. […]
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there is a bruise on my ass shaped like a gun. I cover it with my palm and find that it is hand-sized. I take a picture of it and send it to my two best friends. I text my mom and say, “it’s a metaphor.” I stare and stare. I put my hand against […]
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a lone heron watches as the wind allows the trees to touch their long lost lovers. it’s a spring-sunny day made for Harbord Street. cream clouds wispy with winter’s dying breath against a morning-coloured sky. the cool autumn air under the first-quarter moon breathed into my lungs like untouchable water, reminding my skin of the […]
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