Michelle Lyn King

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.