Why Do U Like Water So Much

Danielle McKinney (American, 1981) - Shelter (2023)

“The earth turned to bring us closer, it spun on itself and within us, and finally joined us together in this dream.”

— Eugenio Montejo, from “The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer,” The Trees: Selected Poems (Salt Publishing, 2004)

“I whet my lips to speak your name. To kiss your hands, curling into the posture of prayer, they could almost have been carved from stone. I swear: If idolatry was my only sin, then it’s because god wasn’t watching.”

— Torrin A. Greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of San Sebastian,” Poetry (vol. 221, no. 2, November 2022)

Atikah Karim by Damien Fry for Blanc Magazine, May 2021

“I whet my lips to speak your name. To kiss your hands, curling into the posture of prayer, they could almost have been carved from stone. I swear: If idolatry was my only sin, then it’s because god wasn’t watching.”

— Torrin A. Greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of San Sebastian,” Poetry (vol. 221, no. 2, November 2022)

“I have grown weary of talking about life as if it is deserved, or earned, or gifted, or wasted. I’m going to be honest about my scorecard and just say that the math on me being here and the people who have kept me here doesn’t add up when weighed against the person I’ve been and the person I can still be sometimes. But isn’t that the entire point of gratitude? To have a relentless understanding of all the ways you could have vanished, but haven’t? The possibilities for my exits have been endless, and so the gratitude for my staying must be equally endless.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “On Times I Have Forced Myself Not to Dance,” in A Little Devil in America

https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/stories/kin-coedel-dyal-thak

I’ll stay in Today by Chukwu Adaeze

paper house: amanda green, devita ravani, and lin tang by jonathan andy tan