I wish I could pop a balloon right now— welcome to Issue 2.

What of what the cat, in its curiosity, killed?

One comic by Caoimhe Harlock.

I STILL GO OUT EVERY NIGHT DETERMINED TO COME BACK BRUISED.

Chasing Magic: Ayodele Casel, filmed by Kurt Csolak and directed by Torya Beard, New York City, opens by briefly focusing on a Twyla Tharp quote painted on the brick exterior of the Joyce Theater: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home, a quote that has new resonance in these times of isolation and lockdown amid the ever-evolving COVID-19 pandemic.

Above the North Atlantic, his lola miles away––her endless hands his face hasn’t fallen into since ‘03, a red hibiscus perched on her windowsill he’s forgotten the scent of.

Two hybrid pieces by Sara Elkamel.

I dust my hands and shoes with ash for comfort and protection

Spooked by his softness, he fled to the forest.

Consider the quotidian horrors—this life your 80s sitcom with a laugh-track, the audience who knows how this ends.

I do not have the stomach to even kill that black widow, her body so shiny in the sun. I cannot release whatever is inside her.

4 photos by Kylie Dawn.

the glowing,/torch-stricken thing I couldn’t quit.

Four comics by Shelby Pinkham.

We inherit these concepts of who we are from our parents, and I appreciate the things my mother taught me, but sometimes the concepts we inherit are outdated or troubling.

Two comics by Coyote Shook.

As in, a body spared from its owner, jerked/onto a splotchy mattress

an infatuation with the idea of my skin

I’m a lot closer to the middle-aged soprano I’ve always wanted to be, but working on this project has made me take a backwards look at a very long shadow.

Reading these poems, I am struck by Choi’s relentless and acute attention to how the everyday becomes shot through with material effluents when living in a postwar national economy driven by industrial manufacturing.