The Emancipatory Potential of the Beautiful:

Erich Johnson

It is safe to say that a common, popular conception of art is that which depicts the beautiful. Nonetheless, even this seemingly benign assumption raises some interesting questions. Is beauty a subjective or an objective notion? Does it reside in…

Minnie Mouse

Raven Baksh

Goddamn, she is some sort of hot today. What is it? Like, nine thousand degrees out? All these sun burnt people with their sun burnt children don’t seem to be bothered… With their bare chicken legs out and their little…

“Hippy Boyfriend”

Alyson “Allie” Brill

I’m not goin’ anywhere. I live in a basement studio apartment with a cracked toilet seat and a peeling paint job. My buddies come over and tell me my place looks like a crack den. I don’t clean things. I’m…

Clouds

Elias Chess

Clouds. Always clouds. They’re why my life is as it is today. Fucking clouds. I can’t believe I used to lie out in a field for hours, just so I could look up at the sky and be with the…

An Old Friend (Variation of Little Red Riding Hood)

Timothy Hayden Hamilton

~ The Reunion Wolf lurks through a dim alleyway in the hood, picking through garbage, trying to go un-noticed. A low pitched idling engine echoes down the alley, he pays it no mind. The soft whine of old car brakes…

Ruby

Alyson “Allie” Brill

Deep, silky brown hair cascaded down her small frame. She had wide eyes and soft pink china doll cheeks. Sparkling on her right ring finger was a ruby red ring with a gold band. 21-year-old Ruby began packing for her…

Little Red

Eli Chess

In the deserts of the American wasteland, every living being is always hungry, always thirsty. Some are fortunate enough to live next to a relatively clean water source where resourceful Roamers erected giant, tremulous windmills to pump water from deep…

The Origin of Racial Conflict

Max Monahan

Beginning at its literal conception, life has had a singular unwavering objective: to survive. A redundancy at face value, this statement is the illustration of a crucial principle: Life, uniquely, by its very nature must put forth effort to…

Bridges

Jennifer Andrews

She stands on a steel girder, her feet hooked around its ice edge, her hand wrapped tight around a cabled wire, her body, pulsing, pulsing in the wind.

Nicole

Kelly Abrams

The air was crisp, and winter was finally settling in. The air smelled of snow, though I knew it would never come. Because my friend had been admitted to the hospital the night before, I’d slept at my mother’s side,…