Issue #14 • May 2026
Note from the Editor: Our May edition gathers five written pieces and a work of visual art that explore the boxes the world builds for us, and what happens when we step outside of them. Our contributors write from the liminal spaces between confinement and release.
In Lauren Johnson’s Unboxing, a mother shepherds screen-tethered children into the South African bush, trading iPads for harnesses and helmets. Vanishing by Barbara Matteau, traces a teenage girl’s slow emergence from invisibility to self-recognition, by way of a cousin’s belated, yet fleeting, attention. Amanda Wild offers Audacious Ambition, a poem letting out the seams of palatability to make room for “who I became / when I split in two.” In Containment, S.E. Rayner writes from the therapist’s chair, on the hidden humanity of those who bear witness to emotion and confession. And in The Farmer’s Market, Suzi Park Larabee captures a community arrested from its weekend rhythm as a baby toddles their first wobbly steps. Accompanying these works is a visual art piece for you to discover, Robert Rogers’ Liminal Phase.
In This Issue

Liminal Phase

The Farmers’ Market
While the farmers’ market was in full swing, thereby the fountain, a baby girl was learning to walk. Herwarm cinnamon face radiated light not…

Containment
A therapist works inside a container. The four office walls form the structure within which we listen, of which we ask. Wehave been trained,…

Vanishing
Hot and sweaty, Cousin Kieran clings to my body, as we mash together. He can barely hold on to me as I have no…

Audacious Ambition
so hot until it’s notso long as I smileNot that smile. less teeth, pleaseless vagina dentata, pleaseless evidence that I could devourwhat devours me…

Unboxing
In an unboxing video, a product is meticulously liberated from its packaging for the purpose ofentertaining overly-stimulated children so that under-rested mothers can take…
