KHÔRA

Everyday Apocalypses

I have been asked What are you? more times than I have been asked my name. My body is expected to represent much more than merely its flesh.

I am asked if I speak English. I am asked where I’m really from. Where I was born. I’m asked what kind of food I eat. Where my parents are from. I’m asked which parent is which. I’m asked why I don’t speak Spanish, and why I don’t speak Chinese. Why I don’t know my own culture. When I insist that I’m American, that my parents are American, and that they’ve never spoken any other language except English, my words are chewed up, contorted in their mouths; spit back at me like insults…

Essay, Lyric EssayGuest CollaboratorOctober 10, 2024A.B. Lim

The Minotaur

No one ever told you the Minotaur was hung. You’d heard whispers, but always wondered if that was a little racist, like “all monsters are hung,” that kind of thing. But when you saw him for the first time?

You gaped. You stared. You felt small and you felt…was the reddening from shame or from sex?

You felt turned on.

Essay, Hybrid, Lyric EssayGuest CollaboratorSeptember 18, 2024Michael Nagle

Stranger Technologies

I am almost out of time in Paris. I keep my headset on and loop around back to the beginning of the museum, eager to see how big the crowds will have grown by the time I get back to the portico. It is when I am in the old drawing room, antique clocks and gold gilded moldings quivering in the firelight, that I start noticing the bleep bleep of walkie-talkies and the hushed exchanges of guards. My body registers this shift, mutating the space from museum to city building....

EssayGuest CollaboratorSeptember 17, 2024Marina Gross-Hoy

to buwaya baby

Dear Buwaya baby, Even a land can be jealous. Even a volcano can get sick of its own disruptions. It’s easy to find the fault lines. Pointed blame is just that. I’d never blame you, buwaya. The land rips open so that the ocean fish can get slick along the fissure. That atlas moth was employed to cover it up — a scapegoat with wings...

Essay, Hybrid, Lyric EssayGuest CollaboratorSeptember 16, 2024Nawa A.H.

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s a man in my neighborhood who comes to the park with his 5-year-old pet turtle named Herbert. He said I could touch Herbert and so I did. I touched his shell, rubbed it, and Herbert took his neck out of the neck shield and looked around and stretched before taking small steps. “He loves it,” said the man.

Falling in love with Herbert was instantaneous. Not slow. Steady? We shell see.

EssayGuest CollaboratorSeptember 15, 2024Mayur Chauhan

a good egg

Have you ever thought about going into business for yourself, the doctor asks while a gloved hand is inside me. She presses my uterus up left up center up right.

Her head pops up between my legs and I meet her eyes. Just a thought, she continues.

EssayGuest CollaboratorSeptember 14, 2024Christina Berke