MAYDAY is a fully remote organization staffed by unpaid volunteers who can work anywhere in the world. We seek out people who bring with them diverse intellectual and cultural backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and points of view that will inform the evolving identity of the magazine. Staff at MAYDAY are asked to limit their contributions to five hours per week to maintain the sustainability of our collective volunteer efforts. We invite applications for Production Editors and Poetry Editors until the positions are filled.
Main Content
POETRY
Inside the Kaleidoscope
by Jane O. Wayne
All it takes is one turn
of the kaleidoscope and the butterfly-world shatters.
Why can’t you learn?
I Hope Your Birthday Is So Beautiful, It Hurts to Look at It
by Josette Akresh-Gonzales
barbeque and a good dog and beer and acres of thigh-high grass
touched by the first draft of evening. A sunlit breeze lunges
across the hay field. We stand around, breathing.
FICTION
Saoirse
by Peter Gordon
Can you imagine naming a girl freedom? he asks me. Can you even know what that would do to her brain, starting when she was a baby, being someone who gets to go through life doing whatever the fuck she wants?
An Account of Vertebrates
by Mandira Pattnaik
In the event of being just matured, we could be jellyfish — pliable, buoyant, floral.
NONFICTION
Geranium
by Brittany Price
My mole has gone to Arkansas for analysis. I think: it’s been to Arkansas with me before. I think: it’s the first time my mole’s gone anywhere alone.
Q&A with Novelist, Memoirist, and Nonfiction Contest Judge
Darin Strauss by Elliott Bueler
“Memoir is not quite a record of a life; it’s a record of your memory about some part or parts of your life.”
TRANSLATION
Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
A witch gave you a pair of legs
(and other things I won’t mention).
Satisfied with your new body, you set off
for dry land. It was August and nobody
was surprised to see you on the beach,
naked and smiling
Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin
translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang,
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
The daring viewpoint of a homophobe widow makes for a toe-curling, but also hopeful read in the riveting Korean bestseller by Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter, dealing with the loneliness and ostracism of a lesbian couple and a single elderly woman.
REVIEWS
“Your Eyes In the Darkness”
A Review of Rick White’s Talking to Ghosts at Parties
by Chase Erwin
White drags the reader, as if by the collar, through moments in time and space that reflect and refract each other, both literally and thematically.
Impossible Belonging by Maya Pindyck
reviewed by Barbara Schwartz
Lyrical, imagistic, playful, profound, Maya Pindyck’s new collection of poems, Impossible Belonging, celebrates abundance, welcoming Dickinson’s nobody and Whitman’s multitudes.
CULTURE
Little Lad-ification
by Ella Gray
A 2007 Starburst commercial introduced the world to the Little Lad, a caricature of an old-timey foppish boy. The Little Lad dances about, tapping his toes and proclaiming his love for berries and cream.
Sex, Youth and Power in Julia May Jonas’ Vladimir
by Megan Jones
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is a novel with, as is increasingly prevalent in modern literary fiction, an “unlikable female narrator.” But her unlikability stems from her refusal to sugarcoat the realities of aging and its attendant loss of power.
