Cheyenne and I are in her bathroom applying our makeup under the drop lights her dad got for cheap. It’s her very own half bath with double sinks so we […]

2022 Columbia Journal Print Contest – Submissions Open from December 15, 2022, to December 31, 2022 January 15, 2023 The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2022 Print […]

My sister’s the one who ran away on a headless horse. She escaped with her bruises to a land that didn’t know her, built a room with sixteen walls and […]

It’s not even noon, but the sun’s way high, and Johnny’s on the jukebox. I’m sitting in the world’s shiniest diner, staring at the woman who has the most beautiful […]

This is not a lie: My interview for a job as an inmate tutor in the GED program at a federal prison was two questions long. Question One. Can you […]

some thanks some memories preserve shared edges; us bearing our asymmetry, you dogearing seams against my thigh… an infinite double- bind persists: two things might not be equal but i […]

This place is haunted. Or it could be, with its bravado of wind and rolling whitecaps and the rhythm imbued by waves slapping the rock wall. All an implication of […]

[Moved Somewhere] Moved somewhere. Stayed up to midnight. Flew elsewhere. Came back. Got […]

My mother wants to sell me oils. The oils smell like fresh-cut flowers and citrus fruits and the fishbowl stench of a house that’s been left unoccupied for several months. […]

I had a job over the summer, not because of financial necessity but because my mother held an unshakable belief in the virtue of work. She said that I needed […]

Don’t look at me I am new and born today Dreaming has changed me The night has Melted off all my influences I saw the big sky turn over twice […]

In Madame Bovary, Emma’s desire comes from the novels she reads. These novels are so full of fantasy that they lead her to a life that bucks the status quo […]

The King Must Die I do not trust the strength of our gods in the most fertile land I have seen people shredding each other apart our body bursts out […]

Hurricane seasons are like children, so you micromanage your first with a dizzying array of safeguarding steps. As you nail plywood to your windows, fill every container you have with […]

The diagrams below are excerpted from Emmalea Russo’s new book of poetry, Confetti (Hyperidean Press, 2022). Confetti begins and ends with ecstatic sunrises/sunsets in the 1970s, opening with The Texas […]

be my talismanic property be my new prize for wanting the narcissism of this hot world cut loose like a blimp I came to revirginize my willpower, a white light […]

It is within reach, what I need most; creative time alone. That is, no co-educational tits occupying the airspace above my shoulder as I labor to paint them, pink as […]

There was a horse I met, his name was the thought of a tree. I saw him in the backdrop of darkness in my mind, and on a farm, and […]

Here is a world, black and body, a mother who is protected and timeless, a father who is her husband and stays. a midwife with hands worth more than a […]