Cargo Literary Magazine

Compelling stories of human development through the lens of travel

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Current Issue

  • Checkpoint
    Checkpoint
  • The Womb of the World
    The Womb of the World
  • a city condo / hideout from god
    a city condo / hideout from god
  • Thumairi Street
    Thumairi Street
  • The Truce: A Bridge between Two Lives
    The Truce: A Bridge between Two Lives
  • Dark Mirrors
    Dark Mirrors
  • Dreaming of a New Earth
    Dreaming of a New Earth
  • For Sale
    For Sale
  • Hungry Eyes
    Hungry Eyes
  • reading for a winter deep and long
    reading for a winter deep and long
  • Illustrations
    Illustrations
  • Bleak Midwinter
    Bleak Midwinter

Creative Nonfiction

Checkpoint

  The Berlin Wall had come down; the Iron Curtain, lifted. Twenty-four years ago, I took a bus from the Czech Republic to Croatia with my ex-boyfriend. I had moved to Prague in the early nineties, and within months, my ex had eagerly followed me, despite my verbal protests. I vaguely remember long-distance telephone conversations, [...]

By Thatcher Carter

Creative Nonfiction

The Womb of the World

  Where are women supposed to go to become goddesses? I stared at the brochure; it was filled with photos of blocky pyramids, angry-looking creatures carved into stone, and an archaeological site plan featuring the names, Avenue of the Dead, House of the Jaguars, and Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. Scanning down to the bottom, [...]

By Amanda Summer

Poetry

a city condo / hideout from god

Here, god walks on homeless feet with grimy dreadlocks playing congas for quarters while watching from a sidewalk bar where he has just been served another dry California red Here, god rides the bus home to Chinatown, holds a strap in the aisle, wears a face still stained with his workday Here, god walks the [...]

By Kimberly White

Poetry

Thumairi Street

Thumairi Street is in Diera, the heart of old Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is as it used to be thirty years ago.   Pamela says that at Souk Haraj bin-Gassem the men shout, “Taille,taille,” and sell everything you can imagine. Thobes, old swords, miswak. She says follow the road past the frankincense and myrrh heaped on [...]

By Marjory Woodfield

Review

The Truce: A Bridge between Two Lives

Thanks to writer and translator Patricia Beiger for reaching back into her own past for this review. The Truce By Mario Benedetti Translated from the Spanish by Harry Morales Penguin Modern Classics 2015; 178 pages, CND$25.90 The first time I read The Truce (La tregua, Mario Benedetti) I was a 15-year-old bookworm growing up in [...]

By Patricia Beiger

Photography

Dark Mirrors

Willy Vecchiato's photograph is black and white. Visceral, absolute and not at all reassuring. He scraps reality in a damnably poetic way. An intruder who moves between the folds of seeing to free all the slags and the annoying or uncomfortable meanings. 'The Intruder' portrays an unexpected place, the unexpected guest who wedges his gaze seducing [...]

By Willy Vecchiato

Photography

Dreaming of a New Earth

Artist's Statement: Perhaps I should not be so partial to the American West for it is true that many places of equal and in some cases superior beauty exist the world over. It also, however, is true that millions of people from all parts of the planet visit the United States continually, be it for its [...]

By Fabrice Poussin

Poetry

For Sale

For Sale The story of this room can be told by the couch and all the teenagers who dry humped their way into adulthood here, making out on its hard, flat cushions, more soft than the floor, especially if you have not yet realized your bones, still have that pliable skeleton from childhood, all babies [...]

By Sandra Kolankiewicz

Photography

Hungry Eyes

About Hungry Eyes: The Accidental Advocate, my next book-in-progress, explores interactions with animals that time and again, prove their wild intelligence. I have felt wonderment in recognizing an other, strange intelligence operating in this world. From elephants in South Africa, monkeys in Costa Rica, Belize and Germany, horses in Costa Rica and California, dogs from [...]

By Sherri Harvey

Editorial

reading for a winter deep and long

Dear Cargo Literary Readers, As we move through the passage of winter, many of us shift towards adventure, pivot to new climates, and make use of our seasoned backpacks. For a long time, that was me. Middle age, however, has brought with it new gifts. One of them has been the stability of a home, children, [...]

By Mo Duffy Cobb

Visual Art

Illustrations

Artist's Statement: I began my art career at age 3 when I drew on the dining room wall with a permanent marker (which guests barely noticed if you moved the credenza over a foot). Weathering the criticism over that, I went on to developed a love of drawing, drew cartoons for the college and local [...]

By Michael Paul

Creative Nonfiction

Bleak Midwinter

Sunrise hides somewhere behind slate clouds. The old church hymn sings of “the bleak midwinter,” and our January morning in the English countryside is starting out just as advertised. Sunrise hides somewhere behind slate clouds. The cold ringlets creeping under my collar seem to sweep in directly from the Scottish moors. We’re here at the [...]

By Dustin Solberg

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