Cicada is a literary journal with a focus on writing that is generative, nuanced, experimental, and inclusive.
By Elizabeth Hay
Science gives some of us clear and logical explanations for phenomena that superficially appear to be chaotic. We calmly list the molecules and products, and balance equations; “energy” is not scary if we can predict and measure it.
Read moreBy Nicholas Wong
Some people love like they believe the romantic / folklore about the moon, but they love too literally / from inside a spacesuit.
Read moreBy Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
My mother’s eyes are dry but tears / sometimes find their way there. / The woman selling dead seafood keeps / wetting the lobsters with ice water / near the shore where tourists cheer and wave.
Read moreBy Mimi Wong
On screen, a woman dressed as a nurse hooked up a heart monitor to a man wearing only swim trunks. Meanwhile, another woman, this one in a string bikini, performed a lap dance. A male host announced that the man’s heart rate had jumped from 96 to 120.
Read moreBy Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani
Memories are jumping out of the baggage. I have not even arrived yet nor have I left.
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“Memory is not a fixed or static image, but is instead a continuous project of re-collection and remembering of those fragmentary bodies, objects, and spaces.”
Read moreTranslation by Jacqueline Leung
you pray your bitterness will never vanish never wit / her your bitterness is like the scorching sun is like your / bitterness just like your forsaken your viscid bitterness
Read moreBy Kay So / Translation by Jacqueline Leung
I worked as a night-shift cashier in Tokyo for a while. Customers who came late at night were usually regulars who always bought the same goods, especially cigarettes.
Read morepeople swam up windows, waiting for rain, and / occasionally knocked on one another’s doors / holding boxes of citrus fruits—sirens inside / sage-green paper.
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