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From the Archives: Touch

By SAM SAX | 26 JAN 2026

By Viviane Sassen — Courtesy of Matheus Bertelli

This was originally published on January 23, 2019.

All I’ve ever offered up in prayer
Never came back as birds.
In my deepest fold I wonder
Lord—is self harm ever devotional or
Is it always a form of possession?
No one cares to make an unremarkable
Gown of their suffering.
Until now, I was so
Sure no one would touch me again.

sam sax is a queer, jewish, writer & educator. They're the author of Yr Dead, Longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG, named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It , winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, and MacDowell.

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two images, both of g–d

By NAFISA A. IQBAL

...a smattering
of question marks:
g-d? g-d? G-d?

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ruminations

By IVI HUA

always, there is so much / i do not want.

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“Another Nameless Sea” and “Dear, Dirty Dublin,”

By JO BEAR

Neither of us
take comfort from worship, but how
else is a country sated?