Essay | JOYLAND

How to Chop an Onion

Matthew Medendorp -

“One real thing is closer to God than all the diagrams in the world” – Robert Farrar Capon It starts underground. Twofold, really, the growing...

Violet

Melissa Seley -

Breezes blowing through a bougainvillea vine I’d recently trained to the eaves, its afterglow crimsoning the painter and me standing in the open doorway...

Playing

Carolyn Ten Eyck -

The night after our first kiss, my band played covers for hours in the campus bar. It was packed, humid in the way a...

Glazer Ball, Gym Class, a Locker Room, and a Bathroom

Davon Loeb -

At Indian Springs Memorial, Mr. Glazer had been a gym teacher for over twenty years. He might have been in his fifties but maybe...

kinder garden

Imogene Mahalia -

I know myself in relative terms. The sun is yellow, as am I; her blood is red, and so is mine. This time of...

Last of the Long Hot Days

Allie Rowbottom -

Los Angeles, September 2020. Five years since my mother’s death and I want to see mountains, feel ocean on the air. My husband, Jon, and...

Descent

Sloan Asakura -

My great-grandpa José arrived in El Paso, TX by way of barbed wire. He walked through Mexico deserts, his legs carrying him amongst the...

Reservations at the Polo Lounge

Liska Jacobs -

When you first pull up to the Beverly Hills Hotel it presents itself as a fortress, and it relies on this impression to keep...

The Burden of Joy

Lexi Kent-Monning -

I know Big Sur in my bones, in my skin, in the scar on my throat from when I was a baby. The jagged,...

I Just Wish You Did Too

Emily James -

I push the toes first, then heels. Press so hard until it feels like I might fall, like the bike pedals could crack beneath...