Essay | JOYLAND

The Confluence of Birds, Language, and Mammals

Mildred K Barya -

The Confluence of Birds, Language, and Mammals 1 Hummingbirds are my favorite. I love their iridescent plumage, but I think I’d be a mockingbird were I...

A Privileged Psychosis

Patricia Kelly Yeo -

The white woman on my laptop screen speaks in soothing, low tones, her voice plodding and patient as a doting elementary school teacher. She...

Intake

Evan Jerome Williams -

The therapist asks, Is there anything else we should know about? No (except I’ve been gaining and losing weight for years, probably since I was...

Hurricane Watch

Eileen Elizabeth -

I am looking for a language of grief to mourn someone still living. When I was small, I would pull down the sun visor of...

The Decision Thread

Sarah Priestman -

I died, for a moment, after careening off a ski slope and slamming into a tree, belly to trunk, arms winged wide. I’d been...

The Entire History of Us

Marisa Crane -

At 18 weeks, Wilder is the size of a disposable camera. At least that’s what my pregnancy app says. When I tell you this,...

Notes on a Christmas Bombing

Susannah Felts -

When I wake to a huge explosion on Christmas, 2020, I want to believe it’s thunder, but outside the window there’s not a cloud,...

The Buddy System

Cassie Mannes Murray -

That summer, the one before our eighth grade year, the year of the world’s first artificial heart transplant—latex gloves, silver scissors, a man’s open...

Mother Root

Catherine Flora Con -

Three weeks into my trip to Taiwan, I went hiking with a Taiwanese man in his seventies who called himself David. The sun was...

Flamethrower

J. E. Sills -

My mother sets fire to the family sofa when she’s three years old. Woodrow Wilson is President and Marcus Garvey is selling tickets back...