A poem by Valerie Salerno
March 3, 2025
It didn’t quite make sense to me when they said that the nightmare that ruined everything, split time in half, put different pieces of me in different places, was gonna be over. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Where did everyone go?..
Walter Lucken IV
February 10, 2025
A poem by Anna Sysling
January 6, 2025
A poem by Valerie Salerno
December 23, 2024
Owólabi Aboyade
November 25, 2024
A poem by Valerie Salerno
November 18, 2024
Lux Laine
November 4, 2024
A poem by Jaxon Kolhoff
October 21, 2024
With closed eyes, my nostrils fill with a metallic perfume. warm sweat. earth. a dampened cave...
A poem by Anna Sysling
October 9, 2024
Ghanaian American author Esinam Bediako has been honored for her debut novel Blood on the Brain, set to launch in September of 2024 in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Metro-Detroit, Bediako’s story of a young woman, Akosua, who is also a Ghanaian American from Detroit, highlights challenges of growing into adulthood in the United States...
An interview with Esinam Bediako
September 9, 2024
It took me 40 years to find the edge of the lands.
Had my head in books with the chickens
Scratched out living
At this late stage of the game,
We’re all actors playing roles...
A poem by Owólabi Aboyade
August 12, 2024
A poem by Anna Sysling
June 27, 2024
A poem by Karpov
April 22, 2024
I visited Greenfield Village on December 26th. Fires burned in front of houses, it is holiday nights. I went up to the Webster House, and curiously, as I recall it, the house moves and grows and slips into the dark. For some inexplicable reason, thighs against the thick, red-velvet rope, I slip into a dream state...
Antonia Piedmonte-Lang
April 11, 2024
Sometimes the internet feels like endless work: ai porridge, uncloseable ads, outlook search and rescue—terror and celebrity simultaneous. Maybe once you turn off notifications you will find enlightenment. For me, zen is Facebook Marketplace...
Grace Millard
April 8, 2024
April 1 Mercury in Aries goes retrograde. Invasive messages of the past...
Theresa Ndrejaj
April 3, 2024
Steam curls, dancing over a bowl of homemade lentil soup, warming the tops of my thighs sitting in front of a fire, tucked away in a friend’s backyard on Larkins Street...
A poem by Anna Sysling
March 25, 2024
A poem by Karpov
March 18, 2024
The inspiration for this piece comes from my personal experiences during the 2017 Mosul conflict, where I witnessed the devastating impact of war on the people and the environment. This piece offers a unique perspective on the complexities of war and the profound impact it has on those involved...
Karpov
January 29, 2024
A New Moon in Capricorn on Jan 11 triggers your need to prove your worth to the world. They might not get it but that won't change who you are...
Theresa Ndrejaj
January 11, 2024
My sister turned 15 last week. She plays the flute and studies all the time. She bakes cupcakes and tries to make friends. In the smartphone. hormone. hothouse. Called high school...
Anna Sysling
January 8, 2024
On Oct 4 Mercury in Libra. Spare the feelings and turn on the charm. People are only ever going to hear what they want to hear. Might as well deliver...
Theresa Ndrejaj
October 4, 2023
Last night I went to a broadcasters’ awards dinner where a woman in a silver sequined dress announced a local station’s prize for Best Breaking News Story of the year...
Anna Sysling
September 4, 2023
Feels so rehearsed, like a simulation. Another memory event. Over time it becomes easier to detach. I envision myself as disconnected from them, their spirits expelling out of their bodies. How can I hurt for someone who doesn't even exist?..
Marissa Jezak
July 17, 2023
On July 2 Venus in Leo squares Uranus in Taurus. This is the beginning of a mutiny in regards to romance and values...
Theresa Ndrejaj and Brad Taormina
July 4, 2023
Weird Magic is a snapshot of several moments that played out in my life over the course of a week or so. The synchronicities both benevolent and inconvenient that I share in this work all felt like tangible and cosmically-time invitations into a deeper level of witnessing and experiencing the present moment. In an ongoing effort to resist the engineered and addictive quality of this little dopamine slot machine in my pocket, I attempt to share (and maybe even celebrate) the absurd and karmic magic of my IRL experiences; while also noticing the ways that attachment to these little narratives that shape my days can be thrilling, self-limiting and entirely arbitrary all at once.
Anna Sysling
June 29, 2023
The full moon in Libra 16° on April 6 lovingly holds a mirror to her dear Sun in Aries at 12:34am, that's where you start and they begin...
Theresa Ndrejaj and Brad Taormina
April 7, 2023
Can you capture the feeling of discovery? Balancing the territorial need to own our places with the curious desire to change our experiences over time. How often do we actively work to outweigh the fear of rewriting in order to see the world around us with fresh eyes...
Maddie Boyer
March 6, 2023
Last week Runner Magazine published the play Is It Morning Yet? by will street. In this interview, he discusses his play, past works and influences throughout time...
Interview by Ashley Cook
February 13, 2023
The play begins with the title track for the show, James Fauntleroy’s "Is it Morning Yet.” The lights come to a slow rise at the end of the song. The commotion of the market begins. QUINTERIUS enters with the first wave of people dressed in his uniform for the day–a lazily put together Santa Clause costume–beard and all...
a play by will street
February 6, 2023
On January 1, Venus and Pluto meet in Capricorn and you may be digging up family heirlooms. Venus enters Aquarius on January 2, bringing a logical approach to love. A Full Moon in Cancer arrives on January 6...
Theresa Ndrejaj
January 2, 2023
On October 2 at 5am Mercury in Virgo stations direct before it ingresses into Libra on October 10 at 7:50pm. Mercury in Libra wants to hear both sides of the story, making friends through fairness and tactful gossip. A great time for networking and expressing yourself aesthetically...
Theresa Ndrejaj
October 3, 2022
On July 5 at 2:03am Mars, ingresses into Taurus. Mars, the planet of action and desire will slow down in stable Taurus. While Mars was in it’s domicile Aries we felt ready to take action at any moment, our desires were right in front of us. When Mars is in Venus-ruled Taurus, there’s no need to rush. Long-term goals, specifically around finances or creative projects, are what we might be focused on. Saving up for a luxurious bath-robe or a Caribbean vacation. Mars wants to keep it moving but in Taurus he has a chance to take it easy, cautious steps towards sensual pleasures...
Theresa Ndrejaj
July 4, 2022
A fair fight is non-existent. You always use everything around and fight dirty and to the point if you gonna do it for real, in any kind of capacity for real experience that you might have as a human being, which by the way, I question more than agree with the fact that I am one of you, or maybe even the same alien race if that might be who you are...
Kirill Slavin
June 20, 2022
The ambition of the world’s superpowers to travel to space, leaving our earthly home through sheer force of will and scientific progress, is the same ambition which led them to construct massive social housing complexes like Cite Gagarine, New York’s Queensbridge Houses, my own city’s Frederick Douglass Homes (known colloquially as the Brewster Projects), the Techwood Homes in Atlanta, and to an extent the entire city of Brasilia...
Walter Lucken IV
June 6, 2022
This coming astrological weather will accelerate the ongoing shift of the greater consciousness. It’s all been building up to this. Will we gather the strength to accept this new understanding? How will we nurture this Proustian “vibe-shift”? Spirituality, sexuality, drugs and the passage of time. Welcome to Quarter 2.
Theresa Ndrejaj
April 17, 2022
Like I was saying this was one of those nights that was so cold all you saw moving was the steam from the sewer. Every other animal besides us knows to get inside and stay there when it’s that cold. I had spent most of my shift in the valet booth reading, punctuated with the occasional trip out back to smoke a cigarette with the cooks from the hotel bar. Wasn’t really making any money but I still had the clock goin. Interestingly enough, slow nights like this was when me and the guys got along best, so we hadn’t got into it or anything that night. I got a cheeseburger from the hotel bar for my “lunch” and about halfway through it one of the guys came in, we’ll call him Mo...
Walter Lucken IV
February 7, 2022
For the past two years we have been put through the ringer. It might have been foolish to expect last year to be any different than the one before it but we can look forward to a touch of reprieve in 2022.
Theresa Ndrejaj
January 3, 2022
I interpret Trudell’s concept of “being human” as defined by a union of “being” - a physical and psychological body event - with conscientious acts of humanity that disrupt colonial power structures. This alignment of the embodied self and the thinking mind allows us to unsettle normative conditioning and connect to a decolonized version of ourselves. I outline how “being human” simultaneously eschews colonial identities and helps one internalize a decolonized paradigm....
Andrew Kaplowitz and Paris La Don
November 29, 2021
What transforms in the body when it becomes ill—not just physically, but its entire essence?
Marissa Jezak
October 25, 2021
Shortly after Samuel Davidson’s absence, five more workers disappeared and fearing it a trend, the boss became concerned about losing the contract. When none of the workers returned his calls and he received angry protests as to why trash had not been picked up in certain locations, he panicked and began the arduous process of covering for the missing workers himself. Unable to manage the workload, the company lost contracts, and soon enough, what remaining workers stayed began to drift away and the company disintegrated...
This short story explores the possibility of upending a system without the need for violence or destruction. What happens when people collectively reject a system built on their own exploitation?..
Rey Hinojosa
October 18, 2021
To Whom It May Concern: the name is JAK, I don’t beat around the bush unless I’m planting flowers there – here, I am lookin for a job and what else is new like ain’t we all? Trying to find the position of our dreams...
Joshua Kochis
October 11, 2021
These in particular I wrote over a holiday break, when I found myself avoiding my last round of seminar papers...
Walter Lucken IV
September 6, 2021
For the launch party, which was held outdoors in a very socially distanced empty lot, she asked me to write a poem about anything I felt needed to be said - to my hometown and the broader world. Pulling back the curtain - collecting the receipts, if you will...
MJ Slide
August 23, 2021
It is not a surprise that the importance of imagery on our society has been growing exponentially for decades, with the adoption of technology solely used to create, produce, edit, distribute, and syndicate it. There are over 3 billion images shared daily, and over a trillion images copyrighted every year. There is an entire system running parallel to culture that stores, showcases, and hides the content created...
Chris McGraw
August 9, 2021
A creative flash non-fiction piece exploring our physical relationship to the sounds of the city from a newcomer's POV.
"Wear sturdy boots and withhold judgment. Open your mind's eye - feel it in your chest. It's gonna be ok."...
MJ Slide
July 26, 2021
You might ask who sent me. Well, I would remind you that those who my work loves, it cannot name. There will be some allusions here and there, maybe an argot or a jargon that the attuned ear can capture, but no names...
Walter Lucken IV
June 7, 2021
Demeter, past post flourish. a hag lost in mort carrying corpus. Seeker, Who is to welcome her summer?
Daisy
May 21, 2021
It has always been convenient to implement hierarchies and categorization as a way to understand differences, but in effect, this practice has robbed everything that exists within this framework of its right for more autonomous, natural, wild and enchanting ways to “be” and “engage”.
En·chant·ment (n) a feeling of great pleasure or delight; the state of being under a spell, magic...
Ashley Cook
March 1, 2021
Due to its sheer size, it is difficult, almost inappropriate, to describe the city of Detroit’s current condition with any one-sided perspective. It has recently been branded as “up and coming” because it has a Shinola Hotel, cocktail bars, and street lights that are turned on (in some locations). What can be misleading though, is the assumption that having a Shinola Hotel, and street lights, is all Detroit needs to turn into a healthy city. This raises questions of - Is that really enough?..
Riley Rinnan
January 18, 2021
After a cloudy day of avoiding potholes, driving at sunset while everything glows orange is a necessary meditation. Driving around in a city this big introduces techniques and etiquette specific to the neighborhoods—learning when to roll through the lights or maintain speed while someone is stood in the turning lane is part of demonstrating respect for the areas passed through. Detroiters made the cars, and they make the rules too. Enjoy the view while it lasts and stay reckless...
Amelia Gillis
January 11, 2021
At TCF they scream “stop the steal”, we insist that there’s no evidence. We insist on science, reason, civil society, even democracy after it was a fiction all year. The water in the Catskills is so cold it stops time. I imagine I can float here for ten years, steeling myself for another 6 months of 2020. I’ll have all the answers when I get out of the water. The teenagers 5.9 feet away are from the future. Maybe that’s why I keep getting plucked out of the frying pan, to give them the pros and cons of civilization before our world is forgotten forever. There’s a lot to be said for it, which is why we keep ending up in a defensive position...
Walter Lucken IV and Dominic Palarchio
December 28, 2020
On July 31st of this year, the Twitter account belonging to Wayne State University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors tweeted that "lowering Black student enrollment by 40% is nothing to celebrate!" and that the Wilson administration had moved the university "away from its mission to serve our community in Detroit"...
Walter Lucken IV
December 7, 2020
The machines came to gnash their teeth, and bite at me, in the winter of 2017. My sister with light blue blush, and the poison ivy, wound round her face in mourning, was eaten the day before. And our brother, smoke-blackened wedding chapel, dangling snaggle-toothed staircase, collided with ground, hardened mud and frosty dew, just the day before that...
A poem written from the perspective of an old house and an accompanying personal essay...
Christiana Laine
November 23, 2020
In the early 2000s self portraiture started to become a central component in defining youth subcultures, with the increased manufacturing of cell phone cameras and escalating popularity of online social networking. People have been making self portraits forever, but before digital photography became such an effortless and widely accessible tool, the self portrait was more of a niche form of art reserved for traditionally skilled artists and photographers. Now it’s omnipresent...
Marissa Jezak
November 9, 2020
Reader, don't hesitate on wondering whether or not this narrative is flirting with the existing conditions of Detroit, or for that matter any other city. It is. And on purpose. That's the point. The narrative however, like any science fiction story, is open to interpretation. I'm not necessarily creating a pessimistic nor an optimistic narrative. I'm creating an alternative environment by simply suggesting possibilities based on existing conditions.
José Arturo Joglar-Cadilla
October 26, 2020
It can be interesting to examine a certain complex that seems to mark the tone for the 21st century of Modern humankind; this complex, and it’s contradictions, occur from the experience of existing in a body that is between an “animal” and a “human”. By recognizing the constant interplay between these two states, which can be abruptly broken, or fluidly linked, we can attempt to communicate our experiences as “modern” humans in the modern world, and unpack its profound impact on our understanding of mental health, gender, race, class, nature, species...and machine....
Ashley Cook
October 5, 2020
The goal of psychoanalysis is to turn neurotic suffering into normal human misery. Obsession as attempt to solve ambivalence felt to be dangerous...Smoldering reek of shame. Blood smiles out at me...You can’t turn it off. Diversion to diversion to diversion to diversion...
Levi Okla
September 7, 2020
I grew up in a very small Midwestern town. The type of quaint and sleepy place where every neighbor waved to one-another and knew your brother, your cousin and your great grandmother. The private Christian elementary and middle schools I attended had a 100% white staff and student population. My public high school in the same town maintained roughly 98%. I believe the homogeneity of my surroundings and complete lack of representation or education about any other races, creeds, or colors, wove an intentional fabric of “blissful” ignorance which has taken me half my life to begin to unravel and reconstruct...
Christiana Laine
August 24, 2020
This is not an essay as such; it is not expository nor is it persuasive. I have no argument to make. Rather this is an attempt to account for the events that have defined the year. It is a patchwork analysis. It is not a new summation of the present crises by any means, but through repetition and slight iterations, comes a grain of nuance which develops the conversation ever so slightly. The decade commenced with symbolic significance. 2020 was employed to inscribe inspirational social media posts with “Vision is 2020,” suggesting finally that “this would be the year!” But, the year for what?..
Olivia Gilmore
July 20, 2020
As artists we are conditioned to believe that our worth is synonymous with the capital we generate and the admiration we receive. But what power does our work hold, apart from its role in this social exchange? The way art functions not only in a social & political context, but as a tool for healing & self liberation is very relevant in late capitalist society. The exhausting and alienating effects of the economic system we live in tend to be overwhelming, and can cause us to gravitate toward self destruction...
Marissa Jezak
July 6, 2020
literature
What would it mean, as contemporary moderns, to recognize these areas, the hybrids, the blocks of movement of something which is in transition between what it was and what it will be? As many contemporary philosophers and anthropologists are beginning to see this need for control as paradoxical and highly problematic, they are asking “how do we break from these tendencies?” And "what kinds of potential comes with the suspension of our need for control?"...
Ashley Cook
June 8, 2020