theoffingmag

[theoffingmag]

How easily I could imagine a version of our lives in which he kept all his suffering secret from me.

— Gabrielle Bates, "The Dog"

[theoffingmag]

I’ve come to the realization that even if the world meets my work with total indifference, my relationship to my art cannot be moved by that. I love to write. It is a thing that gives me the most meaning in life. And so, if it is that deep for me, spiritually, intellectually, creatively, then I cannot allow it to be moved by the market, or by a review, or by a lot of readers or no readers or a few readers—whatever it is.

Q&A with Alejandro Heredia, author of Loca

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The teenager I was, and the teenagers I knew back then, and the teenagers I know now, all possess visible and clear emotional vulnerability that to me is the essence of adolescence. And it’s a rich literary space to explore. This teen fragility, for whatever reason, never really left me; it’s an easy space for me to access and write from.

Q&A with Anna B. Moore, author of Don’t Pity the Desperate

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a lyric essay in one paragraph, repeatedly revised (edits indicated in blue)

I have been teaching my students that humans are storytellers by nature, and then one week I tell them about ChatGPT and artificially generated stories. ChatGPT writes clean prose—no typos, no grammatical errors, no awkward syntax in English—and I have no qualms mocking this text for what it is: a pastiche of natural language, meant to serve whom? I cherish my students. Truly. They write the first layers of stories that they must rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, to figure out what it is they really mean, and there is no time, there is no money in the world that shows them what they do is worth something.

Geetha Iyer, "Exquisite Corpus"

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Mary Helen Callier, "Night-Blooms, Persephone"

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But driving to a neighboring city for sex is as arduous as walking from one room to the next.

Finn Deerhart, "Miles like Friends"

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History can die, and disassemble, and decompose, and regrow, and rebuild, and rebecome. History exists simply because it once was—even without proof, without memory, without ruins.

Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin, "Ngoại and the Coral Reef"

[theoffingmag]

Oh, that, she said. I didn’t mean a literal fire. It was more of a metaphor—the flame of time that warms the cockles even as it cooks our hearts inside our chests.

— Adam Fagin, "Multigenerational Family Saga"

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"Bags" by Diego Alfaro Palma, translated from Spanish by Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta

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Stephanie Cawley, "Drama"

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We’re trying for a babysitter. Angelina shows up in white pants, a gauzy blouse, and delicate sandals; even the condensation on her iced coffee looks curated. I walk her into the yard to meet my children, who are playing restaurant—filling Tupperwares with mud, leaves, sticks. They delight at the new patron.

Elizabeth Bolton, "Lunch al Fresco"

[theoffingmag]

The Porno King key fobs his way into the gym at 3:43 AM. It’s the best amenity in the apartment building and he takes full advantage. He doesn’t know we can hear him.

Keep reading

[theoffingmag]

Among lesbians, butches are men and femmes women. But at the center of the butch, too, is the uterus—the 자궁(子宮), that is, a “palace for the son.” It’s a disconcerting absurdity that makes me cringe before I’ve even reached the end of this sentence, but one that I felt the need to shape into text before it was too late.

"Butch Palace of the Son" by Ibanjiha, translated from Korean by Hoyoung Mong

[theoffingmag]

Undergirding these advantages—but spoken of even less than our country money—was the Get-Out-of-Jail-Free white race card that never left our hands. Throughout the generations, we could play it again and again and trust that it would always be replenished. The card was so light in hand that it was easy to convince ourselves we had never reached for it in the first place. Instead, we could tell ourselves that we were just that good at playing the game.

Amye Day Ong, "When the Game is Rigged in Your Favor"

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As a ghost in this moment I come closest to being the daughter she remembers

Na Mee, "Reunion (Excerpts)"

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I know God is disappointed in me. Will He say I’m the biggest sinner He’s ever seen?

— Shasparay, "Judgment Day"

[theoffingmag]

I believe anything can be said on the page. The issue may be whether the writer has the courage to say what needs to be said.

Q&A with Lynne Thompson, author of Blue on a Blue Palette