Justin Brouckaert

"At night, my spine confesses. He wants to be strangled—this, again. It’s just too much to ask: for me to reach through my ribcage, grip him in my fist & clip the vertebrae like dead twigs from dead branches. You shirk contact, he says. A cowardly trait."

Read the poems here.

Art by Joseph Dolinsky

"Rasheed Wallace is a marvelous singer. This is one thing I can tell you about him. I know not of timbre, of pitch and range, but of feeling, the way Rasheed Wallace’s voice realigns you in ways you didn’t know you needed realignment. How it infects you with the sweetest kind of sickness, a cold sweat you’d rather not wipe away."

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Art by Leigh Merrill

"There’s a reason I try to hold my tweets, to limit the shots I take at NaNoWriMo participants. I’m no expert writer or teacher; I have no right to advise. Each of our creative processes feels unconventional and unique, because it is. But for many writers, serious or fledgling, trying to write so much so quickly is a stunting mistake. NaNoWriMo can be as dangerous as it is enticing, the potential for failure and frustration more likely than the chances of walking into December with your magnum opus under your arm."

Read the full essay here.

Illustration by Josh Quick.

"I wonder the same things every time I slingshot around someone on University Hill: why Mike was always better than me, why I didn’t hate him for it, why, even though we shared leadership, I never thought I could beat him."

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Photo credit: John Bencina

"Sorry, said the guava in the young husband’s briefcase. Sorry, said the guava in the bread box. Good morning, said the guava next to the coffeepot on the counter. Also, Sorry."

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Art by Maryanna Hogatt

"I’m waiting

for a man much taller than me

to scratch his neck tats

& whisper in my ear:

Repent, my dude, repent."

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Art by Daniel Manchengo-Badiola.

"When someone asks me why I don't run anymore, I ask them why their old lovers don't call. I show them these curves in my spine, this bowed gap between my knees. I say scoliosis. I say meniscus and atrophy. I take my body in my hands like the doctor I've taught myself to be. Stress fracture, I say, and point to the fault line in my knee that used to glow hotter than an ember. Like tiny little cracks."

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Photo credit: John Rieley Goddard

"When you're gigantic, you have lots of time to think about how gigantic you are. You were once a tiny little person with a tiny little nose. Now you're an eclipse, brief and forgotten. There was a rush that came with size, an unmatched feeling of power and dominion, but that allure is fleeting. Instead, you think about how unrecognizable you've become, how indistinct and mountainous. How the tiny people must stare and stare but really see nothing."

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Art by Joshua Harley

"On a beach near Beaufort I find a sand dollar in the surf. It's May in the Carolinas & the ocean is good to look at. All day I've been taking wide berths around jellyfish corpses orbed in the sand & now this: just like in a gift shop."

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"We’re up five-nothing when I notice the hole in my side. Some might call it small, some might call it gaping. I put my finger to the raw & it cuts me. Timeout, I say, but the opposing moons mock me instead. Homie so fleshy."

Read the full stories here.

Photo credit: Jacob Spinks

"When you first see me, you gasp at my bones. I’ve gotten sharper. Your hands find the stick and mud of my shoulder blades & your sifting feels judgmental. What did you expect? I say. The skin melted fast without you."

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Photo credit: Tara Wray

"This Christmas, my parents bought me a watch that tracks steps and monitors heart rate, syncs the data to an app. I trek around my city trying to take pride in stairs climbed, calories burned, badges earned, but usually the numbers feel empty. I feel like I’m posing in a world I don’t belong to—or worse, like I’m pretending to be someone I left behind long ago."

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"He sees a red and white building that looks just like the pharmacy where he once filled prescriptions. He recognizes a squat building with a black awning and patio that looks similar to a restaurant where he and his wife once dined on Sunday afternoons. He spots a building that looks exactly the same as a bar all three men visited after their final training session at the space station across the city, sharing the last pitchers of beer they drank together before rocketing from earth."

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Photo credit: Katarina Stefanović

"Two anteaters meet at a feast.

They amuse each other.

One anteater tells the other anteater a joke, a little known fact about aphrodisiacs.

No way, says one anteater.

Yes way, says the other."

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Art by Meg Willing.

"Do not turn to your training partner and confess your fears: that you will lose, that you will lose to him, that identical training schedules do not promise identical results. Do not parse these variables of the body and especially the mind, the myriad ways he is stronger than you."

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Photo credit: Kim Keever