Issue 28 (Spring 21)
Editorial
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…
Creative Nonfiction
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…
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…
Fiction
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…
Wood Ducks
by Helen Sinoradzki Terrence lifts my binoculars to his face. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing,” he says. “They’re ducks, right?” “Not just ducks,” I say. “Wood ducks. Sweep the binoculars left. See how the one on the end is different from the other five?” “Kinda.” He hands me the binoculars and…
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…
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…
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…
Little Pompei
by Daniel Edward Moore Daniel Edward Moore’s poems are forthcoming in Lullwater Review, The Meadow, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Chiron Review, Adelaide Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Bitter Oleander and Armstrong Literary Review. He is the author of Boys (Duck Lake Books) and Waxing the Dents (Brick Road 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…
Ars Party Foul
by Dani Putney You walked in with a vodkacream soda, a concoctionyou gave me to sip.What do you think?as if you didn’t expect meto say it was strange yetappealing, as if my thoughtwasn’t manufactured to bea gear in your cerebral machinery.Tell me, old man, that we’re not the same. Maybe then I could believeI…
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…
Pop Quiz: Antigone
by Grace Q. Song When you are finished, you may retrieve your memory and belongings. In this poem the girl 1. ______ her uncle, asks how do I love a body of law and who is the 2. ______ now. Two desks across, the boy sits three 3. ______ short of lunch. I am the…
Abnormal Pap
by Saba Keramati Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of University of Michigan and UC Davis, her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appears or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vagabond City Lit, and other publications. Kathryn…
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?…
Issue 28 Staff
Faculty Advisor
John Dufresne
Managing Editor
Michael Sheriff
Assistant Managing Editor
Kristin Gallagher
Fiction Editor
Natalie Satakovski
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Brianne Griffith
Poetry Editor
Brittany Owens
Readers
Jaden Gongaware, Yael Aldana, Jordan Hill, Madison Whatley, Giovannai Garced-Rosa, Von Wise, Halsey Hyer, Ranijun Ruado, & Raul Trochez.
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Cover artist
Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees follows Muscogee stompdance traditions, and is director/tribal archivist at Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She teaches Native American Studies at University of South Alabama, initiated by the Tribe. She wrote her Harvard dissertation on the Muscogee Education Movement, documenting Creek’s equal access to public education struggle.
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