Michelle Lyn King

New York

Editor-in-Chief at Joyland Magazine

@joylandpub

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Articles

Take Me to Kirkland

Aug 28, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Sarah Anderson |Michelle Lyn King

When Chloe called me in the car that Wednesday on the way to Costco, my boyfriend Damian and I were arguing about whether or not we would be willing to swallow a goldfish for money. “You have no concept of how the real world works,” he said. “That’s pretty fucking pejorative,” I was saying, as my phone lit up with that stupid picture of Chloe’s stupid face, filtered to have giant eyes and little deer ears and white deer freckles on the forehead.
Best, Anders | JOYLAND

Jul 31, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Jessica Poon |Michelle Lyn King

It’s not the most significant detail, but I thought Anders was married, or marriage-adjacently cohabitating with a ceramicist when I slid into his DMs. I was twenty-nine, and pathetically afraid that I would never be considered nubile again. Anders was a friend of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance, something benignly distant like that, and he was a hobbyist photographer— the most tolerable kind—who’d recently had an exhibition for his photographs of ears.
The Hamptons | JOYLAND

Jul 10, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Marne Litfin |Michelle Lyn King

Oh, I’m ready. A little afraid, sure, but who isn’t? I don’t expect it to hurt. I’ve been near the end three times before, and it’s always the same. Always calm, the same calm. Anxiety is for the well. When death is truly close, it feels like a blanket. A good sleep. I’m sure, in your line of work, you hear that sort of thing all the time, but it’s true. Sometimes I think it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been able to relax. The first time was a fall on a family ski trip when I was fourteen.
Save the Cat | JOYLAND

Apr 29, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Drew Nelles |Michelle Lyn King

This summer, everyone is drinking Aperol spritzes, and Simon orders one now. I would love an Aperol spritz, he says to the waitress, emphasizing that word—love—in a manner he never does with Andrew, his ostensible boyfriend, who is sitting across from him on the patio of the Moroccan restaurant.
Catch and Release

Apr 29, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Amy X. Wang |Michelle Lyn King

◆1. Maisie’s on the verge of something spectacular. This, we know—and not because the nanosecond upticks of her gait, pulse, blinks, aerobic functions, shuddering fast-twitch muscles are all textbook, or whatever. Not because North’s screens and heat sensors and remote-control body cameras are blaring their siren songs, moaning something is about to happen, what could it be? Well: We know what’ll happen.
Local Distance | JOYLAND

Apr 26, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Claire Oleson |Michelle Lyn King

A leucistic moose, a pearled animal with starch-white fur and black eyes, dies to a kia soul going 79 on an upstate rural road. The kia soul dies too—one of the world’s biggest vegetarians shoved through its windshield like a headstone. I buy us brie and a bottle of skin-contact white wine on the way home. The moose is something I see in the paper. I learn about the difference between leucism and albinism on a walk from the trader joe’s to the bus. I learn of partial and complete incapacities.
Big Tree | JOYLAND

Apr 24, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Séamus Murphy-Mitchell |Michelle Lyn King

All the way to the hospital, through its various wings, and along its warren of corridors, I hope that my grandfather is dead, for his own sake. But as soon as I push open the door, I see him at the end of the ward sitting up in the narrow bed looking right at me. He is bruised around the face and hands, but behind the sticky residue of his glaucoma drops, his eyes are bright and follow me keenly as I make my way to his bedside. “You had a little accident, Joe,” I observe.
Tunnels | JOYLAND

Apr 16, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Yasmin Majeed |Michelle Lyn King

Back when we were friends, we spent Saturday nights in the tunnels. This was sophomore year, the cusp of fall in California, and at midnight, I waited in my bedroom for Vijay and Jun to drive up, so I could shimmy out my bedroom window and into that ’93 Honda Civic rank with bud and body spray. At that hour, the suburbs were so quiet it was like we were the only ones alive.
Words in Hebrew | JOYLAND

Mar 5, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Isaiah Newman |Michelle Lyn King

At a bar mitzvah lesson in late November, Isaac asks if Harry Potter is a golem. It’s two months since his older brother Josh’s death, and three days since his first failed attempt at making a golem of his own. Rabbi Bloom laughs, but the sound is less of the barn-owl in the belly Isaac hoped for and more of a crow in the throat. Even though the Rabbi looks like a brown-bearded version of Santa Claus, he never sounds like it.
capistrano | JOYLAND

Feb 28, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Michelle Lyn King

By the tagged up bus bench, three Solo cups criss cross on a particle board table while men with gap-toothed smiles drink 40s and make noise about women. Underneath one cup is a canary. Me and my sisters are mesmerized as the canary flits in between the cups, which in turn flit in between themselves. One man yells at Moms, “Oye gorda, te amo” and she scowls. They ignore and yell, “Place your bets,” as their hands and their cups and their bird gains velocity. The bus arrives with a loud exhale.