Issue Twelve
Spring 2026Emergence
The caterpillars arrived in a small jar with a dark sludge of food smeared across the bottom, like peanut butter. They were supposed to be a learning experiment for my two-year-old, but quickly became my obsession. After weeks of being hooked on the soap opera of their small lives—the restless wandering, the fights for space, the fallen chrysalides—I sat alone in my kitchen at dawn and watched a butterfly pull itself out of its pupa, the intricate pattern on its wings a tiny miracle.
In nature, emergence occurs when a complex entity is formed from a sum of parts that lack the properties of the whole, like the fractal pattern of a snowflake or the wetness of a puddle of water. To emerge is to transform something mundane into something miraculous. Invisible City Issue 12 features twelve works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that offer a hopeful meditation on how we may emerge from the global atrocities so many of us are grappling with. The works you’ll find in this issue will transport you to the top of a ferris wheel and the bathroom of a Boomland, speculate about skin wearing, propose a future beyond the cruelties of capitalism and patriarchy, and so much more.
Thanks for reading,
Lisa Fugere, Editor in Chief
Soo Shin, Production Designer
William Brown, Fiction Editor
Paulina Bylard, Fiction Editor
Zhirui Wang, Nonfiction Editor
Sam Busa, Poetry Editor
End Time
Is time the thing you came searching forDid the void sounds awaken your nostalgia
Can you recall your voice from the sheared part of you
Can you segregate your first shape melted inside your current Read the poem →
Boomland
November 10, 1995No. No. No. This cannot be happening. Not to me, not right now.
I sit up and hug the driver’s seat from behind. “How much longer?” Please don’t be long. Please say not that much longer.
“Not much longer, baby girl.” Read the story →
Bait and Switch
Brown Dad taught me to cut bait,
to fillet away from the tail
and run the knife across the bones
like a stick on a picket fence,
Privilege
Tony knew he was headed for trouble when Cole texted him the name of the restaurant. Schadenfreude was located on the edge of North Minneapolis in a mostly abandoned trench between the Mississippi River and a raised strip of crumbling highway. He exited the Uber with his wife and felt mildly ashamed of the blight, like he was somehow responsible. Weeds and shaggy bushes colonized empty lots. A panhandler pumped a sign near the onramp. The neighborhood on the other side of 94 was denser and better off, but launching an expensive restaurant in this particular part of the cities felt gauche to Tony. Then again, this was Cole. He should have known. Read the story →Reve
“Just let it settle in,” the black-eyed technician said as he pushed the elevator button. Sid, his nametag read, though Lina was sure yesterday he’d introduced himself with something longer.Over the past two days Sid and a blur of other nametags had prompted Lina through the onboarding checklist. They’d slapped stickers with her id number on the side of warm urine samples, and vials of dark blood. She’d initialed dozens of forms after the final psych review, the inspection of the host body, and when the lab work returned. And then, suddenly, they were finished. Reve Inc. had checked its last box. All good on their end. The only thing now was the mandatory waiting period. Twelve hours to sleep on it, if she could. Read the story →
Every Woman Has Something
The first time I was catcalled, I was eleven years old.Read the essay →Vernalia
At least, that’s what they keep telling ussince T.S. Eliot laid it down
more than a hundred years ago. I confess,
I like spring, its warmth,
its long days, its zephyrs,
its green leaves first appearing Read the poem →
Still Not Fatigued 12 Questions
so much someday due to usthe right tomorrow always on delay
so much soon gone rotten
in the barrel, and don’t get me
started on the never now future. Read the poem →
Open Your Eyes
May 1971: the year before Donna disappearsDonna and I clamor side-by-side onto the bench of the Ferris wheel gondola (probably the fanciest word I know!). I’m eagle-eying the scrawny man, making sure he latches the safety bar correctly. “Sure that’s tight?” I ask. His too-close breath smells like peppermint covering cigarettes mixed with leftover morning mouth. Read the story →
DEFENSE + CONNECTION
by now emotions are an experience
Read the poem →Epilepsy Eclipsed
When you lie sleepingin a bed secured to the wall
by the cable
of a nurse’s call button,
I count my worried fingernails. Read the poem →
Parachute
The first one up and the uneasy anti-ritual of making coffee in someone else’s kitchen, barefoot and cat-stepping the cold linoleum as quietly as possible while searching drawer to drawer, cupboard to cupboard for grounds, filters, spoons, et cetera. Read the story →Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is a disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father's struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books. Nathaniel has forthcoming/recently published work with The American Poetry Review, Poetry International Online, Subtropics, ANMLY, North Dakota Quarterly, Red Rock Review, F(r)iction, Epiphany, Potomac Review and DIAGRAM. Nathaniel lives outside Atlanta with his family. www.NathanielLachenmeyer.com