“When I was 14, my therapist told me that I should write a poem about my feelings and immediately I was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ Eventually I did it, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is just therapy that doesn’t cost me an hourly rate.’ So I stopped going to therapy and just started writing poems […]
Being a poet is not easy; publishing a body of work is even harder. But it’s a challenge Jay Walker, who is not new to the poetry scene, is up for. With three books to his name, he’s starting off the new year by republishing them and he celebrated their rerelease with a reading and […]
Your body next to mine, Stiff as a board, With the dorm room twin bed keeping us together like peanutbutterandjelly, The moment childlike just as such. This is the way I remember you most, all curly hair and selfish taking up space, and the only ray of sun that’s peaking through the curtains is hitting […]
Global warming was brought up more than ever this year, and that’s because the effects of it are quickly unfolding. This year was just weird. We’ve had a multitude of floods, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, but I don’t think it hit that these disasters were not so natural until we heard it directly from the […]
Muggs Fogarty tackles not only the subject of sex, but all the complications and emotions that come with it in their book Sex Camel. With only 10 poems, Fogarty takes readers through the notions of their experience; exploring how multilayered sex can be, showing that it’s more than just doing it. Fogarty paints a picture of […]
February 14: My professor rushes into class, telling us that there has been a school shooting in Florida, and I get alerted on my phone that there are 17 confirmed casualties, 16 wounded in Parkland, Florida. Since then, I attended March For Our Lives in Washington, DC, in March, and before that, I attended National Walkout […]
Though most people would consider music a performance art, when the right visual artist comes along, you can see how music can transcend boundaries and provoke feelings through other senses than hearing. For this issue we asked graphic/web designer and photographer Zack Deus to capture this idea for the cover of our Motif Music Awards Nominations issue. I spoke […]
As I sit in the recording studio of New Urban Arts a cacophony fills the small room filled with about five people all playing different instruments, all different tempos, humming to themselves songs that don’t exist yet. Among these people sits Storm Ford. She sits in the middle of the room, stringing her guitar, singing; quietly, at […]
On December 12, 2017, during the Alabama Senate elections, Roy Moore — who was close to losing — stated on video that “God is always in control,” as he refused to concede. The next day, as the election results determined Doug Jones’ win, we learned that 98% of his voters were black women. J.K. Rowling […]
