Nerves Between Song – Geoffrey Olsen
Even as human exceptionalism and capitalist greed threaten the survival of “other worlds,” life manages to return amid the ruins.
In Raisa Tolchinsky’s take on Dante’s INFERNO, we are ushered into hell not by Virgil but by a chorus of female boxers.
Reservoir Bitches – Dahlia de la Cerda
In a country that has one of the world’s highest femicide rates, an irreverent tongue works as an imperfect, slapdash shield.
Misinterpretation – Ledia Xhoga
[Xhoga’s narrator] lives a double life, oscillating between a state of deep intimacy and complete isolation.
[The protagonist’s] worst fears about the corrupting properties of domination have come true. They have moved through this particular crosscurrent of power and emerged someone they never wanted to be.
Mothersland – Shahzoda Samarqandi
Mahtab has translated herself into her mother, and she has translated the past to make it her own.
Love the World or Get Killed Trying – Alvina Chamberland
A dangerous hypervisibility . . . follows trans women onto every street corner, every subway car, every first date with a man, making us less safe every day of our lives.
As the narrator . . . identifies increasingly with their tools, the desert feels more and more like a living being, breathing sand outside its original bounds, germinating and folding blades of grass, unwilling to be captive to . . . humans.
Telling your story doesn’t necessarily mean succumbing to the hefty weight of narrativization . . . reality is messy and incoherent—why not make stories that way?
What’s important about Bratton’s rendering of sex isn’t just that it’s true to life, but that it paints a complex portrait of a person with a dark sexual history.