x-r-a-y magazine, Author at X-R-A-Y

Monologue of a pirate ship that doesn’t have a figurehead, or maybe it did, long ago, but it’s hard to tell now because its bow is encrusted with these ossified clam shells and barnacles, which, during a storm, scuttle about and open up and scream, as though they had mouths. by Jiaqi Kang

October 13, 2021 · Fiction

I only ever wanted to know how it felt to have the wind beneath your feet, eager to hoist you up to where you needed to be, hands outstretched, palms faced upwards and fingers laced together, inviting. As a sapling I watched children do that, paid special attention to the one at the bottom who was always getting a faceful of leg, ass, and hand as his friends used him to clamber over the wall. I was friends with the wall. My roots were entwined with the bricks at its foundation. We’d come up around the same time, the wall…

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MISSIONS by Ali Raz

October 12, 2021 · Fiction

Mission 1 We weren’t in any particularly good place, just a parking lot without any cars. Part of the lot had been flooded and now resembled a pond. It was only a matter of time until A, high on soda, stripped out of his clothes and plunged in. The others encouraged him with maniacal hoots of laughter. I ducked over to untie my shoelaces, squeezed a tube of explosives from inside of one, and proceeded to attach it to the underside of A’s Toyota. I waited for two hours to be out of sight before I dialed The Number…

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NOSEBLEED WEATHER by Marilyn Hope

October 11, 2021 · Fiction

Twelve-year-old Tibby Wallace takes the winter with him when he dies, but it’s an act of rage. Summer scrapes through the valley overnight. Pollens convulse, lakes flood. Hundreds of snowshoe hares wear their December-whites in the sudden verdure; easy prey for owls, foxes, Mazzie Mako’s feral cats. Soft, torn bodies everywhere. Tibby evokes eight-foot-tall stalks of hogweed from every ribcage, furious and toxic to the touch. But it’s the yarrow that spells murder to me and Cricket. “Never seen anything natural grow in such straight lines,” Cricket says, studying the row of rusty blossoms that slit across the town limits…

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YANG LIANTING REDUX by Celeste Sea

October 10, 2021 · Fiction

After the first time we fucked, she pissed on me. A whim. It had felt sacred, hot and vicious, and we’d laughed as the piss slid down onto my waiting tongue.

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X-R-A-Y LITERARY MAGAZINE | COLLECTION VI | DAISUKE & LIZ’S SPECIAL QTPOC ISSUE

October 9, 2021 · Issue

Stories by Celeste Chen, Marilyn Hope, Luz Rosales, Ali Raz, Elias Chen, Stella Lei, and Jiaqi Kang, edited by Daisuke Shen and Liz Crowder, with art by Bob Schofield. click the image for the PDF

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YOU MET DEATH ON LEX by Vi Khi Nao + Jessica Alexander

October 8, 2021 · Other Stuff

and asked her to meet you at a hotel in Brooklyn You would not meet her in Vegas where the sounds of your mother’s movements came through the walls between your rooms Meanwhile, in another state Death courted our brothers on Uber and Grinder As you removed one blind eye from the invisible pocket of your black bra You realized that your memory of your brother had an invisible purse With its zipper sewn on its side and its contents were pennies or wishes So when they hit the surface of your eye the world you knew rippled Back then…

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ZAC SMITH on Normal Life with REBECCA GRANSDEN

October 7, 2021 · Interviews & Reviews

What is an ordinary day? With our days increasingly under analysis, it’s a reasonable question. Everything is Totally Fine arrives at an opportune time. Zac Smith’s stories are permeated with seemingly mundane events, actions familiar to the everyday, the stuff that makes up life. And life is strange. What do we feel when we think of ordinary days? Nostalgia? Longing? Resentment? Relief? As Zac Smith sat down to write these stories, maybe he had some of these in mind, or perhaps he wanted to forget about them. His ordinary days gave rise to a collection of stories, something he didn’t…

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GARIELLE LUTZ on film with REBECCA GRANSDEN

October 5, 2021 · Interviews & Reviews

The way we talk about film, how we digest it, is worth a thought. We “capture” images, we “take” pictures. For those oldest reels, where life skitters in shades of black and white, it’s tempting to view the images as a record, as a window or portal to another time. There is a truth in that. Pointing a camera at people unaware their image is being taken, in that between-time when the medium was new and its nature not widely known, has an unnerving quality. When animals are presented in these infant days of moving image the issue is somehow…

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KERNEL PANIC by Rebecca Rubenstein

October 1, 2021 · Fiction

When his mind went blank, Benno walked to the water store. Smack-dab in the middle of a strip mall a block downhill from his apartment, it was the kind of place that didn’t pull punches. It sold water, and vessels with which to hold water, and that was it. Water cooler jugs lined the walls on one side, and empty aquariums formed a barricade on the other, and the floors teemed with pallets of imported bottled water—glacier runoff from Iceland and Switzerland and all the lands. Metallic shelving flanked each side of the store, and on those shelves sat sturdy,…

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TELOGEN EFFLUVIUM by Brooke Middlebrook

September 29, 2021 · Creative Nonfiction

Is when your hair falls out from stress. Your hair’s heading for the exits but the name rolls off the tongue. Perhaps it’s because I take scalding showers, or I eat too much Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese. Sure, it’s organic, but nothing good for you comes as a powder. The best part is the bunny tail you press to open the box. External forces cause follicles to enter a sleep cycle. Hair loss, when inherited, is called alopecia. The old nature vs. nurture question, like we’re not all tired of that debate. Someone I know is laying in an ICU…

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