ESSAY | A Citizen Of The World – Isaac Aju

There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.

ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble

On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.

COMFORT FOODS // Ends and Pieces – Lisa Ochoa

You’ve probably never noticed them. Their red and white box usually sits well below their thick-cut, smoked, and maple-flavored cousins in their clear ‘look at me!’ packaging. Or, sometimes, Ends and Pieces aren’t displayed at all, and you have to ask the butcher for them. Because mind you, they are the ends and pieces, the leftovers, the scraps. Who would want them?

My mom, that’s who.

ONE POEM – Stephanie Russell

The past peels me off like red pared down to
parent rock (think barn, cadaver, three-wheeled
wagon upended in the bee garden).

ONE POEM – Erin Jamieson

My hand slips—crushed pepper
fills the pot, the water is boiling
not simmering as you said, you said
I needed to be careful, but look now

ONE POEM – Brian Alkire

That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.