Nonfiction

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]