Matt Donovan

but a 400-pound pistol in the bed / of a pickup, welded together from / scrapyard metal & stamped with names / of kids shot & killed near the artist’s home. / Except for all the feathers, dyed / cotton-candy blue & affixed across / its cylinder & grip, wrapping the length / of the barrel with a flourish like a boa / entwining a neck…

Susan Daitch

Many of the animals have always been in lockdown. It’s all they’ve ever known. A peacock stares back from the other side of the fence, a lone sea lion pokes its nose up from its island, and, though you can’t see them, you know they’re there, pacing the interior: baboons, wallabies, prairie dogs.

Matthew Lansburgh

Two plus decades ago, while he was waiting in line at the only place on campus that sold tofu burritos, Stewart stood behind a woman carrying a large vinyl bag emblazoned with the words STOP CORRUPTION. He’d noticed her before, more than once—she was also a freshman, and how many South Asian students were there in Ithaca who wore combat boots and had cerulean hair and attended rallies against apartheid and corporate greed?

Jorge Enrique Lage

I get up early but I can’t free myself from sleep. I turn on the lights. I walk around the house. From bedroom to bathroom and from bathroom to kitchen. I eat breakfast. From kitchen to patio and from patio to living room. I turn on the TV. I read a bit. I walk through the house again. But I can’t manage to wake up. I decide to go out into the street. I run into a friend and confide in him that I can’t wake up. I ask for advice.