Alina Zollfrank

January 2026 | nonfiction

Identity

You have a love-hate relationship with eagles.

It’s the national animal for your home nest, also the national emblem for your chosen nest.

In the end, it’s all just a bunch of letters and feathers. If you’re lucky, some numbers, too, but let’s be honest, your A# doesn’t define what your mom used to feed you for breakfast, or the classical literature you read in your first language and later in your second language and then – yes, because you’re committed to excellence – your third language. Neither do the W— forms your spouse had to fill out to sponsor you into this country that said you should, could never be a burden and you should never break a law and you would not be allowed to sit on a jury or vote, unless – unless! – you paid X amount of $ and filled out a gazillion forms and studied for a test about something called civics –

but when you do, you question the test questions and especially what the answers have to do with what is now happening within these borders and whether along the line when you did the dishes and paid the taxes and taught your children proper English and told them not to break any laws you somehow misunderstood something about eagles all along.

Their calls, it turns out, are puny.

Shrill, really – look at me but then look away while I do something not worthy.

They may glide majestically and drop a kingly feather here or there, but they often feast on what others have gleaned and achieved and scavenge when no one is watching.

You get a crick in your neck squinting up at them and then you stumble because you forgot where your feet really belong.

To label something as royal or emblematic because it looks and hoots like an eagle – naw, you lose faith in that, and also in those random numbers and letters printed on documents that were supposed to hold your destiny in inky hands, but then really just lied about who you are and what keeps you safe in this place in which you had hoped to land.

Alina Zollfrank

Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and recently appeared in SAND, Door Is A Jar, Tint, and Cholla Needles, with more forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Reckon Review, and Heavy Feather Review. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.

Michelle Strausbaugh

January 2026 | nonfiction

Not Another Tragic Fattie

Your new sixth-grade class already had its own rhythms, inside jokes, and hierarchy. Like, it was already over halfway through the school year.

And there was this fat girl—like really fat. Like, nearly 200lbs-fat.

She was such a nerd. Like, during oral book reports in front of the class, hers had weird titles like Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Openers of Old Oregon Volume No. 1.

She was super into Jesus. Like, she quoted Bible verses and invited people to her church for some sort of club on Wednesday nights with a weird name: AWANA. Kinda like marijuana except it had nothing to do with weed because that would have been cool.

She seemed sorta poor. Like, she didn’t wear Esprit sweatshirts and Guess jeans like the other girls. Her shirts had uneven stitches on material that was too thick or the wrong color. And she had pants that looked like they were trying to be jeans except there were no belt loops or fly but buttoned up on the side.

The fat kid is always picked on, right? Like, in every movie or TV show or after school special where there’s a fat kid. I mean, have you ever heard of a fat kid who wasn’t bullied?

Except nobody said anything when you said whatever it was you said to make fun of me—maybe that I had a fat butt? Like, they didn’t say much of anything at all to you after that. I felt a certain schadenfreude seeing you sitting alone on a swing at recess, even as I understood you had said what you said in an effort to belong. I did not know then how to reconcile my feelings of vindication and relief with Christian charity (which I work hard to practice though I’m not as Evangelical these days).

Even though I went to a different elementary school every year (because yeah, I was sorta poor), I had little experience with other kids teasing me about my weight. Like, I have only one other memory before you: in second grade two boys shouted something at recess about me being fat—though I cannot remember what. My girlfriends yelled something back at them, and we went back to playing whatever it was we were playing.

Rates of bullying against fat kids vary wildly. Like, anywhere between 19% to 60% depending on how it is measured (I’m totally still a nerd). Those numbers mean that there are a whole lot of fat kids who don’t get bullied.

The fat kid is not a guaranteed victim. Like, being fat (current weight: 268lbs) need not be a tragic trope.

Michelle Strausbaugh

Michelle Strausbaugh is a chronic illness management specialist working from a bed in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine (and she’s still buzzed that it was nominated for a Pushcart).