2024 – Bending
We are thrilled to share our Spring 2024 issue, Bending, curated by Angie Cruz with drawings by Laylah Ali and writing by Victoria Chang, Caro De Robertis, Julian Delgado Lopera, Jaquira Díaz, Patricia Engel, Courtney Faye Taylor, Nimmi Gowrinathan, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Chinelo Okparanta, Shana L. Redmond, Lilliam Rivera, and Alejandro Varela.
Sometimes I think I should call my mother less often because she’s going to die. She’s neither well nor unwell, but statistically speaking, I’m not wrong to worry.
Most people knew her for her iconic arroz con pollo, the raspy voice, the baggies of crystal, her cig dangling from mouth, chopping plátano, setting down paper-plates on the plastic table in her living room for the hungry travestis to eat.
Sometimes, my words come at the same time as seeing. The idea that one is not interior to the other.
Kajol lines swept under an angled eye in a singular motion: inherited muscle memory. Deep inhales stop working for childbirth and fear. Pain sneaks in.
Can it be feminist, she wondered as she spread her thighs, to want this? Can I still be on the side of liberation?
She tells me I am a loving human being the same day he tells me I am selfish and spiteful. She tells me I am brave the same day he tells me I’m a coward.
This painting, it makes me think of her. How she’d press her cheek against the small of my back and
listen to my breathing.
So I was good with bleeding, respecting it as admonition, as the body’s means of telling a truth. Bleeding, how the body keeps its contract with honesty.