The West | JOYLAND

I Saw A Wounded Eagle Woman Eating Clouds

Olga García Echeverría -

for tatiana de la tierra I’m watching the nurse clean Wounded Eagle Woman’s arm. The gash, which extends from her armpit down to the bend...

First Base at The Cheesecake Factory

Michelle Gurule -

Be aggressive. Be patient. Set your expectations high, but not too high. It was December 2015. I was twenty-four years old, sitting in the...

Private Viewing Mode

Nabeel Chollampat -

“I just think it’s best,” Alana said, convincingly, “if all companies retired their consumption of single-use plastics.”Damn. She got to that one first. She...

Artist Alley

Michael Magnes -

The convention center was full of the Sunday blues on the last day of Rose City Comic-Con. Saturday night bar-con engulfed comic industry professionals...

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...

Love Song

Melissa Ximena Golebiowski -

“Of course the cleanest room in my parents’ house is my dead sister’s,” Henry says. The gold metal threshold separates the hallway and her...

(Partheno)Genesis

Mariah Rigg -

Do you remember how it begins? (Maybe:) You are four years old, lying on a cobblestoned floor. It is New Years. Outside, your mother is...

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...