Translator’s Note: These poems are selected from Esther Ramón’s book Morada (Dwelling), published by Calambur (Barcelona) in 2015. In Dwelling, Ramón organizes the poems in three sections, and does not title the individual poems. I have used the first lines of the poems to function as titles for convenience. The section titles in the book are Excavation, Speed, and Water Stone. The poems included here are from the first section, Excavation.

As I drove the Project Reach-Out van up Central Park West, I spotted a homeless woman I’d been searching for. Helen looked decades older than her mid-sixties. She was sitting on a bench and owning the sidewalk. Her belongings—a rolling cart and multitude of bags— were spread every which way, causing pedestrians to step into the street to avoid her things.

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners for our Special Issue on Loneliness. In selecting finalists, our dedicated Reading Board worked closely with Shir Kehila, online nonfiction editor; Sylvia Gindick, online poetry editor; Victoria Rucinski, online fiction editor, and Eiliza Callahan, art editor.

When she came back from Tokyo for the first time, she was famous, she was twelve and she didn’t recognize her own apartment.

They are click-bait beautiful, my boyfriend and his other girl. Movie star innocence: his blue eyes, her yellow hair. On loop, I watch them dance in the school gymnasium, gold light sloshing at their ankles. How he smiles when she trips, tottering like a doe in her shiny stilettos. How she falls into him like rain, their mouths pressed together in osmosis. The video—sent to me at midnight, the ring of the notification unbearable—illuminates the bleached square of my bedroom, my face cleansed by the blue screen.

Madeline Garfinkle, Columns Editor for the Columbia Journal, sat down with Hilary Leichter to discuss her new book, Temporary, a debut novel that addresses the paradox of work-life balance and what we sacrifice of ourselves for a career. The unnamed narrator, who is a designated Temp, sifts through a series of jobs which include working on a pirate ship, filling in for an endangered species, serving alongside a murderer, and acting as a boy’s mother, just to name a few. The novel brings forth essential questions about the value of work, time, and how life can slip through our fingers.

Columbia Journal is delighted to announce the shortlist for our Special Issue on Loneliness. Our dedicated team of readers and editors culled through a pool of more than 400 submissions that were each uniquely moving.

I remember you as you were last fall.
You were the grey beret and the calm heart.
In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on.

I’m standing in the little girls’ clothing section at Wal-Mart trying to hang up a fluffy pink tutu skirt. The handheld scanner is balanced in my blue smock pocket against my hip. It’s the kind of skirt I would have loved pre-transition—bright and girly, a hint of fairy queen, perfect for fanning out by the heater or spinning in the kitchen like a ballerina. $8.96, reads the tag. I don’t see any other skirts like it; they must be sold out. I place the skirt somewhere it doesn’t belong since it’s already homeless. I take a step back.

I cannot even fathom the fear my black friends in the United State face in their day-to-day lives, while buying groceries, selling loosies, jogging, or even making a phone call in their own backyard. The murder of George Floyd in police custody is not an anomaly. His murder is reflective of global systemic abuse against dark skin, and his death speaks to the intergenerational and ongoing legacy of racism that prevents equal access to justice and the chance to live a life free of prejudice. I’ve only encountered glimpses of everyday racism across the world, and the encounters make up my nightmares. It frightens me to imagine living like this across generations for four hundred years.

Rome 32 BCE
1. There are no memories here. There is, instead, a rose garden on a hill.
2. Dark vines clutch broken columns.
3. Blossoms swell like wounds

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century is a collection of writing by disabled people, edited by disabled activist, media maker and research consultant Alice Wong. Founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community supporting and amplifying disability media and culture, Wong also co-produces and hosts the Disability Visibility podcast and partners in numerous other disability rights initiatives. This collection, as Wong writes in her introduction, “brings all of these collaborations, connections and joys to the page.”

The genre of literary fiction in the Indian subcontinent has always been hard to come by. I think fondly of fiction by Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, and Amitav Ghosh. Then I think a little more because I want to think of women. I think of Arundhati Roy. I stay in that little bubble, re-reading The God of Small Things, over and over.

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the violent confrontations between gay rights activists and police after a raid on The Stonewall Inn, a Mafia-owned gay bar. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march to honor the riots and subsequent uprising. In years since, Pride celebrations have morphed into slick displays of corporate-backed consumption and rainbow capitalism; radical origins are glossed over in favor of thirty-day calendar acts replete with free rainbow pens and Jell-O shots, large displays of police surveillance, and police marching along parade routes that feature flashy narratives that skew white, cisgender, male.

Hay caballos en su pubis, hay caballos en su vientre, en
su pelvis hay una gaita algebraica, hay unos engranajes
de volteo, hay galápagos, en su vientre. Hay galápagos y
golpes: galopes.

Ex-boxer still goes to the gym. He’s got nothing else.
Works out.
Slowly and sorta softly.

Embrace reduced visitor capacities as a temporary reality for art museums

When we got inside and mother started talking about how many pills, doses of radiation, months she’d live if this and this and this went that way, I realized the worst moment of our family’s history could be preserved. And so, quietly, I took the picture. Then I took two more.

I saw my father’s penis for the first time in my life today.

after ‘O’ by Claire
Wahmanholm
long live our loyalty, how it loops, falls, lumbers, lulls and lists— finally resisting its own limpness.