Berlin Golshan Mahmoodi

Alight! From dysphoric routine and wander

Through pink alleys, joints cracking with curious steps to take in a city of smog and concrete. Map spaces of safety with cold feet and release the blue chill of melancholy trapped in bones

Broken and repaired by the women who see you. Naked under loving gaze, your body is a question No one cares to ask. They have the answers you seek in dreams you have yet to voice, they speak in tongues and hips and hair, unfurling wings of white to reveal truth and beauty and bodies

Broken and repaired by people who see them. Clothed in vibrant joy, hands grasping mine pull me into the light, into their utopia of glitter and hope

Tomás Miriti Pacheco

The darkest January on record/ every morning/the sky draped over your shoulders/ like smoking in the movies/a memory in another room/give me a blanket/ I’ll take the couch/or the floor/might not get up all day/like the sun/either way it’s your pick/the shows you watch/ or the sky on a missing channel/ that’s all they’re selling us/the sun brand new on a leather jacket/the glow/ heat blooming black from an open oven/ something to keep warm/the cool/ the opposite of a supernova

The Meaning of Life

Josh Nkhata

I’ve been searching for it for quite a while.

When I was 9 I found it in the back of a JC Penny I asked my mom, “Can we buy it?” And she said, “No, honey, we have The Meaning of Life at home.” And I stomped my feet. I didn’t like The Meaning of Life we had at home. It was the sugar-free kind and had an aspartame aftertaste. Not to mention, the cover of the box had a man with holes in his hands which I thought was rather odd. Sadly, by the time I had enough quarters in my piggy bank to buy it myself, the product had been recalled for widespread health issues.

When I was 15, I saw an ad for a different Meaning of Life on the right-hand column of a PDF converter website it made me install a google chrome extension which brought me to hyperlink which brought me to an IOS app download which, encrypted inside, had a series of code, both Morse and computational. But, upon deciphering the code, I realized it had been falsely advertised and only contained the Meaning of Death (which I learned was to keep the casket industry afloat).

Even last week, I swear I saw the Meaning of Life roll down 53rd street and drop into a gutter. I desperately screamed at a man to catch it for me, But, having no eyes, or ears, or face, or faith, or hope, or time for my shenanigans, he proved no help at all.

All of this considered, you can imagine my utter shock this morning when I looked into your eyes. and.

There it was. Yes. Somehow. There it was.

Like a strange bout of pink eye or cataracts, the pulsing answer to cosmic irrelevance and galactic indifference was right next to your iris

It had always been there. It had always been you.