Current Nonfiction

Boyd Perez

Worn-out from a security job in the Bronx, I lugged myself up the stoop of my tenement in Bushwick, inserted the key in the lock, tried to turn it, but couldn’t. A white envelope taped underneath the diamond shaped window in the door caught my attention. I peeled it off and read the message left therein on a sticky-note: “Call this number for the key.” Fuck. Three weeks ago, I found a free writing workshop at the Brooklyn Central Library. There were people there who said that they would help […]

Ilana Cruger-Zaken

Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.

André Breton

In the depths of the Museum of Natural History in New York City, that mausoleum of theft, plunder, and death, stuffed with the dead bodies of ancestor creatures (some of them, also stuffed), an unattributed quote hangs on the wall: We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors, we are borrowing it from our grandchildren. Amidst the riotous cacophony of skeletons and preserved creatures, earth-hewn minerals and a veritable dossier of colonization on and off Planet Earth, […]

Jim Ross

Globally, across religions and cultural traditions, the last half to three-quarters century has witnessed a dramatic resurgence in pilgrimage. Partially the result of increases in leisure time combined with the availability of reasonably-priced transport for returning home after reaching a terminus, pilgrimage traffic includes those motivated by spiritual drivers as well as eco-tourists seeking to experience historical and cultural treasures, including UNESCO sites. Across all forms of pilgrimage, one thing is constant: pilgrims move—usually by foot, but also by bike, horseback, donkey, or wheelchair—from their place of origin toward a […]

El Carlisle

Dear Darling Daddy Issues (Every 15 Minutes I Used To Think Of You),

It’s days like today that make me not sure which one of us had a psychotic break. The dreams are so ingrained in my REM sleep that I don’t see them as nightmares anymore. They are one step in the locomotive behaviors that still trap me for four, or sometimes five, hours every night. These dreams are just memories repeating. It seems like something a therapist would want to dive deeper into. But I have tried that, and […]

Edwin Brun

One day in early February I woke up to read a headline letting the world know that a sixteen-year-old trans girl, Brianna Ghey, had been murdered and left to be found in a park. I did not know Brianna Ghey, I will never get to know Brianna. I do not conjure the image of a dead girl frivolously, I do so out of necessity, and perhaps my own selfishness. I cannot escape the space that has been left empty by Brianna’s death. In this emptiness that I find myself in […]