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Editorial Issue 28

Unhinge

by Michael Sheriff The submission period for this issue began with a necessary structural change at Gulf Stream Magazine: We added a no-fee submission option for BIPOC writers and artists. Removing the barrier of cost for people who have been systematically oppressed created an opportunity for our staff and future as a literary magazine. Through […]

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fiction Issue 28

Littler Women

by Ji A Ines Lee All the girls in Symor village reduced at least once a year.  Some reduced on their faces, others on their arms, and the braver ones on their legs.  They came to school with white scars running down sunken cheeks, bones visible beneath their diaphanous skin that bloomed with purples and […]

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Issue 28 poetry

Laissez Les Bons Temps Roule

by Horacio Sierra For José Arreola, a welder who died on October 12, 2019, while constructing a hotel in New Orleans’s Central Business District. Down in New Orleans we take pride. That’s right. We take it. From the French, from the Spanish, from the British, from these great United States. Or from you. We’ll gladly […]

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Issue 28 poetry

Gentrify

by Wendy Thompson Taiwo Bury erase revitalize gut Burn the effigy sell the bones strip the copper pipes keep the edgy street art Who was it who once said, “Only the rich have shrines”? Old family homes purchased by preservation societies Grounds maintained by garden clubs But what about the homes of southern Black migrants? […]

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Issue 28 poetry

Synagogue of Green Grass

by Jonathan B. Aibel   Every summer Saturday my fatherworshipped, walked the roaring mower with its choir of bladesaway and back. As my brothers and I each in turn grew strongenough to yank the recoil, we were inducted into the mysteriesof prime and throttle, spilling gasoline, the sweet benzene smellmixing with newly manned sweat while […]

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Creative NonFiction Issue 28

Thai Trojan

by Ploi Pirapokin During the summer, after my first year of graduate school, I borrowed my father’s Royal Bangkok Sports Club card to pay for two papaya shakes. My friend and I gulped them down as the waiter held the brown card up⁠—eyes darting between the tiny headshot of my wrinkled father and my oops-expression⁠—then […]

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Issue 28 poetry

Black Madonna

by Tifara Brown I used to walk around my house with a sheet on my head, pretending to be Mary from the Bible. My soft curls matted on my head suddenly dragged the ground as I stepped around our moldy double-wide trailer into the role of the Madonna, the mother of God. I believed Mary […]

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Creative NonFiction Issue 28

At the Edge of Water

by Sayuri Ayers Behind my house, Alum Creek swells with the March rains. Parting the bare branches of overgrown pawpaws, I walk to the edge of the bank. A birch leans into the water, its stripped branches stark as bared bone. Below the steep drop, the creek swirls. Its current bears Columbus, Ohio’s debris: crumpled […]

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fiction Issue 28

The Trouble of Aketch Nyar Sewe

by Edith Magak Aketch Nyar Sewe died a virgin. Mayoooo! That was very bad, badder than the matter that she had died. We were just crying a little that she had died, because to die after all, was the way of the world. But when we scooped soil from the ground and showered it over […]

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Issue 28 poetry

The Alpine Fault

by Erin Rose Coffin Erin Rose Coffin holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her work has appeared in Raleigh Review, Arcturus, Angel City Review, and Punch Drunk Press. She is currently a writer-in-residence at Goodyear Arts, and she lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her partner and her […]