Editor’s Note
Regardless of what segment of life we come from, the context of our everyday has been disrupted; how, then, can we rethink how we fit into the social fabric?
Before After
To deconstruct something is not to destroy it, but to understand how it was built, part by part; what can our new narratives teach us about the reality that’s been there all along?
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ReadWhite Vulture • Random Access Memory
When we raise our hands now, the air is flush / with vacancies. -
ReadMakeshift Borders
retracing frowns is how we forego boundaries, to chase greener passports. -
ReadThe Way we Are Buried
The true cost of dying lies beyond the sick. It buries itself in the people who try to love the sick. -
ReadFruit of the Earth • The Winter the Women Went to Sleep
I have wasted these curses on minor disappointments. -
ReadBury Me Next to Your Name
“I need you to do something for me,” you said as you sat across from me in the locker room. -
ReadI Keep Counting Up
Four weeks. Four weeks and still the virus. Things that were once normal now seem absurd. -
ReadBeyond the Distance
What makes a country great? Surely the answer doesn’t lie in vast tracts of forest land that have been converted into concrete megastructures -
ReadThe Salvageman
I want to talk to you about awe / what it means to turn / yourself over -
ReadHow Things Are Done
The way restaurants work has never been fair — yet everyone just seems to accept it. -
Read“bastard” and other poems
anjing my mother calls you. / how dare you defy what god has given you? -
ReadTo My Father, on the One-Year Anniversary of His Death
I am standing at the ironing board, running a hot iron over a folded and stitched-together strip of quilting cotton to make bias tape. -
Read“This is a Body” and other poems
it is a form of mothering / to hurt yourself / rather than others -
ReadI Know my Life Matters but How do I Translate That into Japanese?
My students & co-workers worry / if I return to America, I’ll catch COVID / or a bullet in my back. -
ReadAn Origin Story
I could talk your ear off about the current state of Mexican-American literature. -
Readharmer/harmed: an interactive zine
TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, creates the featured art for Issue 12: Before After
Explore
Read more incredible work from our community of writers, artists, and activists.
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Issue 11ReadActionable Storytelling
What exactly are the breaking points that force us to seek a fresh point of reference, to steer ourselves in the collective direction of healing? -
Issue 13ReadRebellious Joy
How do we claim the kind of joy that creates a rupture for passage through all the horror and despair?