Messiah Wolf

by Joe Donnelly

When I was a boy, my imagination was ripe for wolves. But, it wasn’t the usual folktales and fables that got to me, or the scenes of wolf packs airbrushed onto the panel vans of my suburban youth. At six years old, my wolf was a companion, not a cautionary tale or a signifier of

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Community Plot

by Bryan Washington

I’d started tending the ex’s plot. The lettuce and the garlic and the turnips. It wasn’t my idea, the apartment complex had a community garden, and of course I’d seen you out there but we didn’t have shit to say to each other. We met on the stairs after my guy left, and it was another few weeks before we spoke. I’d seen you around, though. Sometimes I’d catch you staring. Our eyes met, and you’d look away. You were an old man, living alone, always in the same greasy cardigan and the same burnt brown shoes, which was everything […]

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Alabama Funeral

by Kristen Iskandrian

The sitter arrived with a Ziploc bag of brightly colored string. “For friendship bracelets,” she said, one eye veering off. “Yes,” Bette said. The sitter’s eye was particularly lazy today; Bette had never gotten used to it, although she herself, when extra tired, had an eye prone to drifting. Bette was aware that she could

Subscribers only: to access this content, you must be a member of ZYZZYVA Studio. Membership is included with any subscription. Subscribe today, or if you are already a subscriber, log in to continue reading. (Read our FAQ for more details, and contact us if you have any trouble logging in.)

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National Poetry Month: Twenty-Seven Objects of Explicit Wonder

by L.A. Johnson

1. house with lawn gone yellow 2. no matter which direction, the wind 3. swimming pools and dreams of pools 4. coyotes that shriek like children 5. naked intruders 6. scent of honeysuckle through a sunroof 7. dish, broken, never thrown away 8. half-lidded sentences that ramble on 9. swimsuits drying on balconies 10. water even a seahorse would swim in 11. the clear circles a hawk makes in the air 12. reservoir, with a lover’s name 13. confessions heard over the ocean’s waves 14. two eggs cracked, each with two yokes 15. fingerprints on mirrors 16. fire danger warning: […]

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The Golden State Bundle, Now Available

by ZYZZYVA

ZYZZYVA Golden State Bundle: No. 117 & No. 119

Within the realm of literature, there is no need to choose one region over the other. Get the Bay Area Issue and the Los Angeles Issue in our Golden State Bundle and enjoy the work of some of the best poets and writers that California has to offer. Together, the issues in the Golden State Bundle boast many of the West Coast’s finest writers, with fiction by Charlie Jane Anders, Jonathan Escoffery, Rita Bullwinkel, Michelle Latiolais, Chia-Chia Lin, Perry Janes, Ingrid Rojas Contreras; essays by Tom Bissell, Lydia Kiesling, and Wendy C. Ortiz; poetry by sam sax, Victoria Chang, Meg […]

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Alabama Funeral

by Kristen Iskandrian

ZYZZYVA Volume 36, #1, Spring 2020 (No. 118)

The sitter arrived with a Ziploc bag of brightly colored string. “For friendship bracelets,” she said, one eye veering off. “Yes,” Bette said. The sitter’s eye was particularly lazy today; Bette had never gotten used to it, although she herself, when extra tired, had an eye prone to drifting. Bette was aware that she could be, in a multitude of ways, a perfect hypocrite. She was named after Bette Midler, which had always embarrassed her, so she told people she was named after Bette Davis. “So it’s ‘Betty’?” people would ask, and then she’d have to correct them, and they’d […]

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The L.A. Issue: Letter from the Editor

by Laura Cogan

ZYZZYVA Volume 36, #2, Fall–Winter 2020 (No. 119) - Night Version

The following is Laura Cogan’s Letter from the Editor in our new L.A. Issue. You can purchase a copy of Issue 119 from our Shop page: Dear Reader, Though Los Angeles occupies an outsized space in America’s (and even the world’s) cultural imagination because of the film and television industries, its literary culture is comparatively overlooked or minimized. Here on the West Coast we are busy enough going about our work that it is easy to forget for long stretches at a time the still significant East Coast bias in publishing. And then every so often someone in New York sends […]

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The L.A. Issue

by ZYZZYVA

ZYZZYVA Volume 36, #2, Fall–Winter 2020 (No. 119) - Day and Night Versions

The L.A. Issue. Fiction: Ray Bradbury, Siel Ju, Jonathan Escoffery, Perry Janes, Francisco González, Andrés Reconco, Kathleen Mackay, and Michelle Latiolais. Nonfiction: A. Kendra Greene, Wendy C. Ortiz, Steve Ryfle, and David L. Ulin. Interview: Steve Ryfle talks to the late Wanda Coleman. Poetry: Victoria Chang, David Hernandez, Genevieve Kaplan, Douglas Manuel, Dan Murphy, and Mary Otis. Art: Henry Lara. You can purchase a copy of No. 119 here, or order a subscription to ZYZZYVA now. […]

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Cathedrals of Hope

by Lauren Markham

In 2004, when I was first old enough to cast a ballot in a presidential election, I lived in a small Vermont town, population 1,136. It was home to farmland, a cemetery, a snowmobile shop, a church, an elementary school, and a town hall that most days sat empty and unused. The leaky clapboard house my three roommates and I rented was shared with mice that ate through our cupboards and a badger who lodged in an unfinished back room. My roommate Margaret used to sunbathe on our lawn to the occasional honk of a passing car; we all enjoyed […]

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35th Anniversary Issue

by ZYZZYVA

ZYZZYVA Volume 36, #1, Spring 2020 (No. 118)

Our 35th Anniversary Issue. Fiction: Bryan Washington, Lysley Tenorio, Elizabeth Reichert, Santiago José Sánchez, Mark Chiusano, Peter Orner, and Kristen Iskandrian. Nonfiction: Lauren Markham, Dave Madden. Interview: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton talks to John McMurtrie. Poetry: Meg Hurtado Bloom, Lisa Higgs, Troy Jollimore, Debora Kuan, Jennifer Richter, Dujie Tahat, John Sibley Williams, and Emma Winsor Wood. Art: Anne Siems. You can purchase a copy of No. 118 here, or order a subscription to ZYZZYVA now. […]

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