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SPECIAL CALL
2026 Special Call: SEE SOMETHING/SAY SOMETHING CITY
2026 Special Call: SEE SOMETHING/SAY SOMETHING CITY
Slag Glass City Submission Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content
Archival City
Top Drop - SLAG GLASS CITY
Top Drop - SLAG GLASS CITY
2026 Archival City Featured Essay by Jenny Johnson Content Advisory “Requesting devotion is so vulnerable,” Robyn reminds me. We’re in a bar sitting at a high-top, talking about topping. I’ve just confided to her about letters I came across sifting through archival papers at the New York Public Library. Correspondence from 1972 between two leather men, a sadistic top and a masochistic bottom. As a part of their exchange, the top asked his bottom to write the following sentence one hundred times: I must re-evaluate and upgrade my standard of excellence.[1] The request sounds easy. Copy the sentence over and over and mail it back. Except the top also asked that the sentence be written at a desk “with feet spread and one foot tied to each spread leg” of the desk, and the writing must be “beautifully written out” with “no horizontal or vertical waves.” I show Robyn a…Continue Reading
WHEN BONES TALK - SLAG GLASS CITY
WHEN BONES TALK - SLAG GLASS CITY
2026 Publications
Mourning Rituals - SLAG GLASS CITY
Mourning Rituals - SLAG GLASS CITY
by Travis Cohen Acosta These are fall days, as leaves begin to die off elsewhere. In my 27th year, in Miami, they remain evergreen. Do the fibrous trunks of palmettos make it difficult to decipher how many years have passed since they were saplings? An aging bull iguana, perched and dull orange in the sun, has amber for eyes. What has he seen behind all his armor? As palms continue to rattle and sway in the wind, as the iguana sunbathes, death has found another way in. The heat has not yet subsided, but in a half-lit condo in Pompano, just an hour up the highway, the blinds are drawn, and the breathing has stopped. Fronds remain verdantwhile my father, once so tan,proceeds to grow pale Death is life’s most effective teacher. Its lessons are engraved with such a finely sharpened point that even the opaquest ideas take on a…Continue Reading
2025 Publications
Anniversary - SLAG GLASS CITY
Anniversary - SLAG GLASS CITY
Sirened Cities - SLAG GLASS CITY
Sirened Cities - SLAG GLASS CITY
Rainy Melbourne - SLAG GLASS CITY
Rainy Melbourne - SLAG GLASS CITY
by Jeremiah Gilbert It’s my last full day in Melbourne. I spend the morning exploring the city, but then the rain begins. I seek shelter in Queen Victoria Market, but the rain persists. I decide to catch a bus back to my hotel. I have an early flight home in the morning and haven’t packed yet. On the way back, I notice the raindrops accumulating on the bus window while the world outside becomes wetter. I take out my camera, setting it to manual focus, and see what sort of abstractions I can create each time the bus stops. It’s a world of angles and figures, umbrellas and raincoats. SLAG GLASS CITY · Volume 11 · June 2025Header image by Jeremiah Gilbert About Brittany KassMail | More Posts(15)
Ordinary City - SLAG GLASS CITYO
Ordinary City - SLAG GLASS CITYO
De/Layers - SLAG GLASS CITY
De/Layers - SLAG GLASS CITY
Some of the Change and Unchanged - SLAG GLASS CITY
Some of the Change and Unchanged - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Underground City - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Underground City - SLAG GLASS CITY
Special Issue-Archival City
Here Lies A City - SLAG GLASS CITY
Here Lies A City - SLAG GLASS CITY
by David Rompf Emerging one morning from a subway station in Lower Manhattan, I waded through the bustle of traffic, sidewalk vendors, and flocks of tourists meandering toward Wall Street, and soon I found myself in Trinity Churchyard, an oasis surrounded by seemingly indestructible symbols of money and power, its iron-gated tranquility braced against the clank and clatter of commerce. Not far from here, massive Corinthian columns stood guard at the New York Stock Exchange, while farther down on Broadway, the bronze Charging Bull, emblem of American resilience and economic prowess, held the steady pose of the perennial Instagram star it has become. Inside the churchyard, as I stood on a winding path, a stream of visitors resolute in their aim hurried past me, heading without pause to the marble temple at Alexander Hamilton’s gravesite. But I did not fall in line with them, for on this spring day, pink…Continue Reading
Time Is A Distance That Changes The Shape of Things - SLAG GLASS CITY
Time Is A Distance That Changes The Shape of Things - SLAG GLASS CITY
Queering Le Septième - SLAG GLASS CITY
Queering Le Septième - SLAG GLASS CITY
by Emilio Williams Who are you? To size you up during a first meeting, a New Yorker or a Londoner will ask what you do for a living. Somebody from New Jersey will ask, “What exit?” in reference to the highway sign that should determine your place in the world. In Chicago, the question is: “What neighborhood?” In St. Louis: “What high school?” In Boston: “What parish?” And in Atlanta and Los Angeles: “What do you drive?” The Parisian version of this game: “What arrondissement?” ~ The name game. Humans seem to love pigeonholing strangers. Gender, race, perceived sexual orientation, class, educational level, country of origin, or all of the above; high-level categories that people use to classify each other, as if we could write field guides to humans. Everything and everyone needs a name, I guess, but what I’m talking about now are conscious and unconscious biases a category…Continue Reading
The People's Bridge - SLAG GLASS CITY
The People's Bridge - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Residence Hotel for Introverts, 1989 - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Residence Hotel for Introverts, 1989 - SLAG GLASS CITY
2024 Pushcart Nominees
Ektopia by Rebecca Wallwork- SLAG GLASS CITY
Ektopia by Rebecca Wallwork- SLAG GLASS CITY
Carol's Chair by Maggie Andersen - SLAG GLASS CITY
Carol's Chair by Maggie Andersen - SLAG GLASS CITY
by Maggie Andersen 2023 CITY OUT OF TIMEEDITORIAL BOARD SELECTION Whenever I have any kind of a special event on the books, I head to a little salon a few blocks from my apartment, which is completely unlike the others in the neighborhood. Carol’s exists on a forgotten block of Lincoln Square near the Social Security office, the post office, the Burger King, the little Korean dive bar, and a Women’s Workout World. This stretch has been exactly the same since the eighties when I grew up here, before the luxury gyms and wine bars all cropped up and pushed out most of my neighbors. The sign on the front of Carol’s is her name spelled out in what looks like primary-colored alphabet magnets. The first time I walked through her door I was told to have a seat, so I sat on the cracked black leather couch with the…Continue Reading
Queering Le Septième by Emilio Williams- SLAG GLASS CITY
Queering Le Septième by Emilio Williams- SLAG GLASS CITY
by Emilio Williams Who are you? To size you up during a first meeting, a New Yorker or a Londoner will ask what you do for a living. Somebody from New Jersey will ask, “What exit?” in reference to the highway sign that should determine your place in the world. In Chicago, the question is: “What neighborhood?” In St. Louis: “What high school?” In Boston: “What parish?” And in Atlanta and Los Angeles: “What do you drive?” The Parisian version of this game: “What arrondissement?” ~ The name game. Humans seem to love pigeonholing strangers. Gender, race, perceived sexual orientation, class, educational level, country of origin, or all of the above; high-level categories that people use to classify each other, as if we could write field guides to humans. Everything and everyone needs a name, I guess, but what I’m talking about now are conscious and unconscious biases a category…Continue Reading
Resources
About the Slag Glass City
About the Slag Glass City
Who is the Slag Glass City? EDITOR: Barrie Jean Borich ASSISTANT EDITOR: Brittany Eve Kass EDITORIAL INTERN: Jacqueline Yeager MANAGING EDITOR: Audrey Juergens CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michelle Janssens Keller, Tim Hillegonds, Jen Soriano ~ What is the SLAG GLASS CITY? Slag is a waste product of iron ore processing and a leftover of the steel industry that once dominated the city and surrounding areas of American industrial centers such as Chicago, where this journal originates. Slag glass is opaque and decorative; the streaks of color are said to have once been the result of adding slag to molten glass, though this part of the description may be urban legend. The origins of slag glass as a decorative arts material are murky and speculative, but the end product is a beautiful and utilitarian image of nonfiction art that comes from, and speaks to, the post-industrial city. Skylines are made of glass; cities are at…Continue Reading
Visit the Slag Glass City
Visit the Slag Glass City
Submit to Slag Glass City!
Submit to Slag Glass City!
Slag Glass City Mini Order Form
Slag Glass City Mini Order Form
The Slag Glass City Tumblr
The Slag Glass City Tumblr
Special Issues
SPECIAL ISSUE - This Blissful City 2021
SPECIAL ISSUE - This Blissful City 2021
SPECIAL ISSUE - COMMUNAL CITY 2022
SPECIAL ISSUE - COMMUNAL CITY 2022
Slag Glass City Submission Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content
Slag Glass City Works
"Intimate Strangers" by Elizabeth Foulke
"Intimate Strangers" by Elizabeth Foulke
"Athens: The City I Miss, the City I Love" by Adrianne Kalfopoulou
"Athens: The City I Miss, the City I Love" by Adrianne Kalfopoulou
by Adrianne Kalfopoulou “Remember telling someone you’d meet them somewhere;” this tweet on my feed takes me to Athens with its crowded sidewalks, its bar-café life where people will take up entire side streets in Exarchia (the “anarchist hub”) or Kolonaki (the “bougie hub”) or anywhere else in the city. More an outdoor than indoor culture—I mean, this is Southern Europe—since March 2020, and the first of a series of pandemic lockdowns where the Greek government mandated people to stay indoors, Athens is very literally policed. We have to send SMS text messages to a government portal before leaving the house; we tick one of six options that include: a visit to the pharmacy or doctor #B1; grocery shopping #B2; business that can’t be done electronically, as in banking #B3; funeral attendance (no weddings mentioned) #B5; helping someone in need #B4; and exercise, of oneself or a domestic animal #B6.…Continue Reading
"In Winnemac Park" by Peggy Shinner
"In Winnemac Park" by Peggy Shinner
by Peggy Shinner In Winnemac Park a heavy bag hung from a tree. The bag was attached to a chain looped over a limb, its four-foot length secure but free to swing. Stasis and potential. The tree was leafless. The bag leather. Everlast. But not everlasting. It had been well-used, well-hit, its weight displaced by a greater weight and sent sailing. Perhaps it had been salvaged. Somebody’s bargain. Somebody’s dummy. I gave it a kick, a roundhouse kick, a light tap that set the bag stirring. Here was someone’s jungle gym, in a stand of trees, in the middle of a park, in the middle of a city, on once native land seized by federal proxies. Then they approached, two lively kids, ready to get at it, adults barely. It was their bag, their gym. Their claim on this makeshift parcel. The girl carried a pack of props. Gloves, I imagined.…Continue Reading
"It's the Alcohol Talking (three street scenes and one old memory)" by Renee Simms
"It's the Alcohol Talking (three street scenes and one old memory)" by Renee Simms
"The Birds Don't Stop" by Jasminne Mendez
"The Birds Don't Stop" by Jasminne Mendez
"Down on the Street at Blake & Sixteen" by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
"Down on the Street at Blake & Sixteen" by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
"Another Type of Silence" by Ira Sukrungruang
"Another Type of Silence" by Ira Sukrungruang
"I Went to See the Cherry Blossoms" by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
"I Went to See the Cherry Blossoms" by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
"Pandemic, Florida 33004" by Julie Marie Wade
"Pandemic, Florida 33004" by Julie Marie Wade
"BLUE SUN" by Mane Hovhannisyan
"BLUE SUN" by Mane Hovhannisyan
"Grace and Freedom in the Reopened Library" by Polina Kroik
"Grace and Freedom in the Reopened Library" by Polina Kroik
"Inside the (Seismic) Shift" by Rima Rantisi
"Inside the (Seismic) Shift" by Rima Rantisi
"Jobs I've Had" by Taylor McGraw
"Jobs I've Had" by Taylor McGraw
"Find Entrance" by Elizabeth Paul
"Find Entrance" by Elizabeth Paul
"City Scenes" by Patty Paine
"City Scenes" by Patty Paine
"Take Fountain" by Anne Sawyier
"Take Fountain" by Anne Sawyier
"Keystone" by Julie Marie Wade
"Keystone" by Julie Marie Wade
"Midway in Four Directions" by Kathryn Kysar
"Midway in Four Directions" by Kathryn Kysar
Crying at Dollar Tree - SLAG GLASS CITY
Crying at Dollar Tree - SLAG GLASS CITY
Time-Lapse - SLAG GLASS CITY
Time-Lapse - SLAG GLASS CITY
Knidos - SLAG GLASS CITY
Knidos - SLAG GLASS CITY
Back in Elementary - SLAG GLASS CITY
Back in Elementary - SLAG GLASS CITY
Walking in High Heels and How Matthew Shepard Walks With Me: a Queer Timeline - SLAG GLASS CITY
Walking in High Heels and How Matthew Shepard Walks With Me: a Queer Timeline - SLAG GLASS CITY
From Ashes - SLAG GLASS CITY
From Ashes - SLAG GLASS CITY
when i was a boy, i wasn't - SLAG GLASS CITY
when i was a boy, i wasn't - SLAG GLASS CITY
City Out of Desert - SLAG GLASS CITY
City Out of Desert - SLAG GLASS CITY
A Particular Sense of Highway Comradery - SLAG GLASS CITY
A Particular Sense of Highway Comradery - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Twelve Months of September 2020 - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Twelve Months of September 2020 - SLAG GLASS CITY
FAÍSCAEMCHAMA - SLAG GLASS CITY
FAÍSCAEMCHAMA - SLAG GLASS CITY
GENTRIFICATION IN SERRA GAÚCHA - SLAG GLASS CITY
GENTRIFICATION IN SERRA GAÚCHA - SLAG GLASS CITY
Transitory Space, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NYC - SLAG GLASS CITY
Transitory Space, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NYC - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Spin - SLAG GLASS CITY
The Spin - SLAG GLASS CITY
Spinning Records: A Review of Joanna McNaney Stein's Ingénue - SLAG GLASS CITY
Spinning Records: A Review of Joanna McNaney Stein's Ingénue - SLAG GLASS CITY
SIDEWALKS SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE STREETS
SIDEWALKS SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE STREETS
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