Grief Before Grief

October 19, 2020

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor (The Operating System, 2020), and Killer Bob: A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.

Our Home Isn’t a Fantasy Suite, But That’s OK

July 31, 2020

Kailey Tedesco lives in the Lehigh Valley with her husband and many pets. She is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing), Lizzie, Speak (White Stag Publishing), and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press). She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine and a co-curator for Philly's A Witch's Craft reading series. Currently, she teaches courses on literature and writing at Moravian College and Northampton Community College. For further information, please follow @kaileytedesco.

On Trick-or-Treating with My Brother

October 23, 2019

Monique Quintana is a Xicana writer and the author of the novella, Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). She is an Associate Editor at Luna Luna Magazine and Fiction Editor at Five 2 One Magazine. She has received fellowships from The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, The Sundress Academy of the Arts,and Amplify. She has also been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Micofiction 2020. Her work has appeared in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Winter Tangerine, Grimoire, Dream Pop, Bordersenses, and Acentos Review, among others. You can find her at [www.moniquequintana.com]

Falling in Love with Penn Hills

August 8, 2019

Kailey Tedesco lives in the Lehigh Valley with her husband and many pets. She is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing), Lizzie, Speak (White Stag Publishing), and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press). She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine and a co-curator for Philly's A Witch's Craft reading series. Currently, she teaches courses on literature and writing at Moravian College and Northampton Community College. For further information, please follow @kaileytedesco.

A Sequence of Dreams

June 20, 2018

I graduated from college one month ago. Still, I am having the dreams. The ones where everything that has not settled or come to pass arises again and comes to gather before my closed eyes.

Matters of the Heart

May 9, 2018

The heart has four chambers; everyone seems to be aware of that.

What It Means to Be an Empath

March 6, 2018

I stare at his photographs sometimes and I try to find where it is: In his beard, his wrinkles, or his shining eyes. Where does it live, Whitman? This thing you call a wound, this love you carry? And why does it live within me too?

Falling in Love with the Rose: Some Beautiful Images To Make Your Day

February 23, 2018

Sappho called roses the lightening of beauty. Rumi wrote that the rose’s rarest essence lives in its thorns. Picasso once lamented you can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.

Ma Says Monsters are Real

December 14, 2017

I’m still so afraid of all the monsters that I never want anyone to know or even know about, that no one should ever have to know at all.

Do This in Remembrance of Me

December 13, 2017

My mother says that she feels the presence of my aunt a lot. Something in the way the curtains move and shake when the wind blows makes my mother feel her there. I’ve never experienced that. A month ago, however, I experienced something else. I had dreams about her often after she died. In the beginning, it felt kind of her to show up like that. Despite the experience of watching her die and then seeing her body leave, I never had nightmares. It was always dreams about her talking to me and being confused over my crying. Even in my dreams I would cry because I was aware of it being a dream.

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

October 26, 2017

Because Pauline? She was dead. And it couldn’t have been her daughter because she had stopped by the day before she left and dropped off the secret recipe to Pauline’s strawberry rhubarb jam. That jam had been our family’s favorite for years, but until now, the only way we could have any was when she brought it to us in the summertime herself.

Things My Illness Took from Me

October 20, 2017

When I ride the subway I become so many ages, I carry so many different years, and they appear in layers inside of me in a way I wish I could erase

Penguis by Sebastiᾶo SalgadoDescription: This photo provokes an image in my mind of the passing of millenia and the relentlessness of the cycles of life. — Penguis by Sebastiᾶo Salgado
Description: This photo provokes an image in my mind of the passing of millenia and the relentlessness of the cycles of life.

On Black & White Photography & a Memory

August 15, 2017

I have always been drawn to black and white photos more so than color. I know the basics of color theory: black is the reflection of no color and white is the reflection of all colors and the colors we perceive are a matter of how much of the color present in light is reflected versus how much is absorbed. But theory does not help me answer these aesthetic questions: What is the appeal of black and white photography? How do photos, whether in black and white or color, relate to the stories we tell ourselves about the world?

The grave of W.B. Yeats in Drumcliff, County Silgo.

Land of Magic & Myth: Our Writer's Photo Diary of Ireland

June 19, 2017

I fell in love. Fell in love with the sadness and the mystery, the make believe and the darkness, the dead and the living, the monuments, the reverence for the lost, and the eternalness of myth.

Follow me through this photo diary of just a few of my favorite sites from my recent travels—places of heartbreak and glory, mist and fog, warrior queens and poets.

Bay To Break My Mind: On the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Summer of Love Being Shut Down

March 7, 2017

All I could feel for certain was that it certainly wasn’t "a happening" as the very un-groovy bellows got closer and louder still. So close now I could no longer ignore whatever the impending invasion was. I crept back up to the road’s edge, still remaining hidden behind the thick brush. As the ever-increasing loudness grew, other noises were revealed and morphed into a swirling soundscape mixing into 500.1 3-D audio channeling into the mixing board of my mind with all knobs twiddling. Rising low rumbles of many drums banging out of sync with high pitched whistles clattering atop like hard rain on a hot tin hangar roof.