-
The Immigrant Daughter Speaks
I’m not going to force your name–– Mother → Mommy → Eomoni → 어머니 → Eomma → 엄마–– because I never called you that. I never called you anything. For all your shifts you were the same, twisting every verb into –ing (I am telling you, I am not saying) when it already happened.…
-
aubade for egg time-lapse
after Alan Michael Parker it starts as a rash hungover past the yellow line i blur into a stroller on the far platform we threw out anything remotely half-used: my bedsheets lay limp, like bedsheets egg whites crease on themselves at every intersection your basement smells rotten for a week this is how the world…
-
Pantoum, (pantoum) pantoum.
Yes to the catchup, I saw your text, I’m just not sure about which day I’m free yet, but I’ll reply soon No, of course. No worries. Looking forward! But I’m just not sure about which day My hands will not be cold when I touch Warm palms of nice people who look past …
-
Howling in this Moment
after “Howl” (1956) by Allen Ginsburg I saw the best minds of my generation locked-in scribbling syllables at desks in the basement C floor of Firestone library covered in a lifetime’s layer of dust, who skipped last month’s Labyrinth poetry readings by Komunyakaa & Hayes to puzzle over problem sets & so missed the…
-
Treatise on Believing in Yourself from Elizabeth Holmes
To diagnose someone means they’re already sick. We need more time, I tell my investors––Kissinger and the other men. It can only happen in blood. I don’t give stories or specificities. Silicon Valley means you create the outline and let them fill you in. All I do is put on a low voice, Steve Jobs…
-
Anthracnose: An Exodus
Leaves cascade from the oak, to which my parents swore, stems diseased by my sins? I trace the veins anyway, hoping they will lead me to their quiet, promised land. It lies within a barren forest. where whispers linger, taunting as they pray for me. I am lost, trying to find my breath. I…
-
Auction
introducing the body size thirty-four B tits, forty-four round hips slim twenty-nine-inch waist thick thighs I used to once hate a gap so spaced that words fly out of it a forehead so big you could play chess on it brown skin, lips thin height small, not tall disclaimer of the body I can’t be…
-
Blackness in Residence
The Amistad sails a silent scream across the sea. In its wake, a dark tapestry woven with violence. Mouths in the hold lie open, inaudible, begging for the nothingness that is everything. On this ship, terror lurks. A violence of abstraction separates Black from man and kills him twice, Discarding his body like dead…
-
Love Is
Love is an expression simple to understand but tough to maintain. It’s like a symphony of instruments created individually but only complete together. The catch being that the notes are obscure. The sheet music is unscripted and all that’s left is You. Its blind conductor who was given no directions. You see, love comes without…
-
A Restaurant in Hayward
Mmm, linoleum floors, my favorite, I think. It’s 7:30 am, according to the analog clock on the wall, and I’m officially pissed at being up this early for my driver’s license exam. “Window 10 is OPEN!” an older lady screeches, and I lung forward. She wears glasses that hang from a cord…
-
Trapped
The tracing of distress tailored against the coarse lining ripples and bumps engulf flickers of dim hope. The clashing dissonance overwhelms one boundary, edging to the brim of its inverse. The tracing persists. Wrenching and tugging at seams of a suffocating cloth proves pointless. A bloody mind splitting battle entails a victory lap to celebrate…
-
Okro anaghi eto kari onye kuru ya
Ma snatched me out her stomach on a Wednesday. My first day as abrupt as it could be Gather the elders, gather the aunties. Ma didn’t plan on having me They sang a song to put her at ease Her diary said that God must have sent me I was born to a river amongst…