Poetry
muqin
by Ana Chen
mama i don’t come from gutter // i come from butter yellow & water-parched
lips the
good kind. // mama i don’t come from rooster shit // could never slather it across
my cheekbones never had dung kiss my
nose // sometimes you fill your lungs with highlighter plastic across each
rib // sometimes i bronze your tongues // tongue? // & i lied when i said i
didn’t crack your stilettos when i said //
the jeans were worth my tongue when i said // i don’t drug your coffee with my textbooks what if i
slithered beneath your teeth slit your
molars? what if chopin’s heads rolled across my chopping board // ivory black gunpowder silhouettes
// of eyebrows.
if i tug-a-warred your umbilical cord i // would birth myself in shrimp in //
bao zi in // er zi maybe as a son i could traffic jam my nipples maybe as a sun i would lick
down the car // windows chewed glass piercings in both eyes // ribs as kalaidescope i
would steam you fish with my forehead grease // i would grate this esophogus down
your sweatpants // dress nicer // i could ski down my
acne adolescent alpines mama
// if i came from gutter would you bathe me in
gray jeans nonetheless // would you wax me butter yellow parch
these tongues shoot down suns sons mama //
i lost your necklace yesterday spilled my waistline across
your jeans // mama
cali did a number on me when was the last time you saw me
walk out of church // crop-top white flag // mama i
chew beef. spew gristle across your // stretch marks
// moon webs // kiss your
blush mama there
are worse things to want
than new nail polish.
by Chaim Durst
When was your last battle of
Manassas? All-night shakes,
Late night I love you calls.
Where did the forces of
Self-loathing first breach
Your stonewall escarpment?
Does the shade of all this
Neutral grain hide the holy
Ground where your brothers lie?
Do you have the spirit left
For one last Rebel Yell?
by Kate Hizon
the American baptizes us in civilization the way
the Spaniard baptized us in organized religion.
and we shake, heavy and soaked with sampaguita oil
and the weight of the gold sun.
cellophane wrappers stick to the forehead of my third cousin
tamarind skin shining, she has never seen herself in Miss Universe
only in the outer coat of a yema triangle, quick to crumble
into the gooey milk and sugar.
across from her my father’s hands tell of the times
of cuts from fault wiring, a hammer shattering
his thumbnail. a new one now growing to push
the blackened one away.
and my grandma in the next room spitting onto the home phone
syllables of Kapampangan and crushing all the bones of her old
high school classmates. she does not care for the boxing match
that rages on, the mass of bodies packed in the living room,
holding onto their styrofoam plates and beef tapa.
the opponent is on the floor before we go home.
by Kirby Marquez
My grandmother told me she used to dream about me.
Before my parents, before I was born,
She already believed in me enough to sow seeds.
And to this day, she calls us grandchildren her harvest.
Sometimes she reminds me that I come from the divine.
In her godly ways, she spent days creating and nurturing my roots,
Toiling away, until I burst through the soil, from the clay.
New to this earth, she showered me every day
With love, and water, and love, and sunlight, and faith.
Faith in God, faith in family, and faith in me.
Faith that I would flourish with nourishment,
That I would spread my leaves and learn to fly,
That I would never deny rainy days, but instead,
Embrace them ‘cause I need them as inspiration for respiration.
Here’s to believing in the sun that we breathe in.
So when this world leaves you feeling trampled and small,
Remember your power during the golden hour,
When the sun leans down to kiss the horizon
You cast a colossal shadow,
Grander than your ancestors’ wildest dreams.
You are a fruitful harvest.
You are bountiful.
You are abundance.
You are more than enough.
by Linda Liu
If the blade were to fall from my hand then tell me how I should mend these scars
The pain is a line of stitches that I must cut loose
Before the sun sets.
Night blurs my vision and my thoughts run blind like mad dogs out of a cage
Prying open fresh and rotting wounds alike to suck at the marrow
Asking for the sacrifice of blood
So tell them tell them it was you it wasn't just an accident wasn’t just a slip you never tripped or fell no show them the perfectly straight scars perfect like everything else you do so how is this any different the open wrist the bandage the cover-up -
Lies.
Pathetic to the bones
Yet if I could I would rather seek death but I could not
Too proud to lose but too weak to fight the blood will calm the monster it will be my final scream it will quench its thirst the blood flowing down down my palms on the carpet the sun is setting it's not enough it's not enough
I’m not enough.
I know it will come back for more—it always comes back for more
But how else can I spit out the cement from my veins?
My skin has become such a numb coat that it must be peeled back must be shed sliced open to reveal what words cannot scream it is not my vocab that has failed me to them to them the sounds I speak are devoid of meaning detached from feelings they only hear the words they never read the sentence they stop listening after the period.
How useless is a tear duct when sadness can only be cried by the drops? My body holds an ocean of emotions
A sea of loneliness flows through these veins these arteries
Crossing the heart
For every imperfection every disappointed glance every sigh it fills a crack and breaks a wall it drowns the words “I cannot” it shatters the room for failure for love for all other possibilities of me in another parallel universe I don't see any other me
Tell them there isn’t any other me
For this is me
Before the sun sets
by Nikki Gill
My heart stands
tall as a tree
reaching, reaching, reaching
up towards Heaven
But I am still heavily rooted
to the trauma
that lives in every
part of my being
some of my branches
grew in crooked
that is why I flinch
when you raise a hand
to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear
I was forever changed
by the roots
they twisted
when I was just
a sapling
sometimes a beautiful flower
blooms on the tip of my topmost branches
and I bask in this beauty
that was able to thrive
amidst such tremendous weathering
there are times that
those flowers get crushed
but another always finds a way
to bloom
behind it
Now
I am focusing on turning
flowers into fruit
even if its just one at a time
I have hope that this tree
will do what it was meant to do
Grow
I will never stop growing
not only upwards
but deeply
from the root down
expanding outside of the
tiny, starving roots
that I started with
No one can see this root growth
It is invisible
But
More powerful
for my longevity
than a thousand fruits on my branches
Every time I cultivate my
Mental strength
I can
feel myself sinking
into the earth
and I know
that no matter what breaks off
at the top of my tree
I can
Regrow
The profound richness
of the soil of the universe
Embraces me
as I fall
deeper and deeper
in love with myself
until
I OWN
MY OWN
ROOTS
by Parv Sachdeva
#1
Kitchen in the solace
“Walk along the fingers of a squirmy marmalade”,
As I focus on deployed weapons of human hunger hanging,
From iron cages well suited to encapsulate my thoughts.
There’s a little plant on the border of this small country,
Hence the room I am in.
Its cupped leaves hang not dry but frivolous and stands,
Waiting since eternity for someone to save it.
I am the culprit of servitude.
And the victim of this insane solitude.
The mahogany wipes away canals of tight rosewood,
Embedded like veins in disguise.
This cushion that supports my body and head full of,
Dust on this calm and serene climate of kitchen,
While the ash-tray is filling up with economy from yesterday.
My cigarette jiggles like a red hot sword cutting through the air,
And each amber death leads a soul in the air.
The day is after I get up,
This kitchen is where I boil my dreams,
Wash them up,
Rinse them clean.
And seep them uprooted in cupboards of glass of fragile inhuman history,
Yet to be used again.
#2
Nocturne in Black and Gold – A falling Rocket
after Nocturne in Black and Gold, 1875 painting by James Abott McNiell
So winter has come to a halt,
You can be anyone,
Burning photographs, houses –
Anything that doesn’t exist for you.
And now,
I am laughing at the stars,
I hate this minute,
Because each day you were falling.
I feel incredibly low,
A muddy Christmas of ‘97
If the message was out of time,
No one responds.
Them blue lights and ceilings,
Of glassy skies, churches, pits, cycles –
And every dead deserve,
We ignored.
I wish you could,
Help me touch, my callas
Them green gardens of hopes,
Them broken fountains and no floods.
#3
For the people faster than light;
This world revolves too slow,
Or maybe I am too fast to notice,
I am too slow.
Your flower bloomed in time,
While mine was just wasted years,
I’ve been talking to walls all this time.
You don’t seem to understand my world,
I cannot deny yours.
You put me down, kick my guts,
Take me back and spill my lust,
You take my belongings and throw them up,
They look beautiful anywhere, while I pick them up.
You hate me now, I wonder why,
That’s my job.
I know I don’t fathom but still I cry.
You burn my brain and twist me till I’m numb,
I’ve hated you all for so long, that I’ve gone insane.
You don’t reach out for anything,
I just reside in resilient thoughts,
You don’t understand my world,
I don’t understand mine.
dhanamdhanyampadevadet: taking responsibility for my home
by Suvali Dhanak
My long middle toes tell me I’ll never fall in love, but my curved pinky tells me I’ll be excellent at rolling rotis.
I carry coldness and duty in red polished pots on my wide hips and atop my head,
respectively; I inherited them from my grandmother. My joints ache with the arthritic
nobility she wrote into the wrinkles of my knuckles.
My grandfather tells me to think before I speak, the same words he yelled at my mother as her eyes
stood level with his hip in now-amalgamated Zimbabwean casinos; she drank the scotch that
splashed out of his crystal glass and fell asleep in her tomato soup.
I see my mother’s memories playing on the tapestry of my grandfather’s sandal-less
tomato-red-sock-clad left foot as the missing sandal becomes the instrument by which he
assimilates me into obedience.
My cheekbones tell me I’m my mother’s daughter and my chin says that I’m my masi’s and maa’s
beti. Foi and foi-baa have no visible claims to my body.
I worship the maternal masonry by which I was constructed - the precious Tigerskin Jasper
that comprises the curvature of my every bone.
Amani tells me her father was Rayam’s famed casanova before he breathed svaha-heat into a fire
and was tied to a woman’s odni.
I pull a coiled golden thread from my choli. Or my belly. It’s hard to tell. But it certainly
feels as if I’m going to throw up my fatherlessness all over the mandir floor.
by SWu
When I swallow,
When I spit,
When I gag,
When I vomit
Yet the burning I feel in my throat
Pales in comparison to the burn in my face
On my cheeks
On my fat, flabby stomach
It is nothing
Compared to the humiliation of running to the sink from the bathroom stall,
When I lift my head and look in the mirror and see tears streaming down from my face
Not from the pain, not from the shame,
But because my body is crying,
Because I tried too hard to purge myself of the crackers I had for dinner
My body screams because it is hungry, but I tell myself that it’s good,
It’s good that I’m disciplined, it’s good that I’m making progress
I’m a fucking masochist
Not from a sick, phallic pleasure of starving myself
But rather an equally disturbing relief,
A congratulations when I manage to make it through another day without eating
I’m not stupid
I know that nothing is changing,
I know that I will never be skinny or happy about the way I look
But it doesn’t matter.
It’s irrational.
When you manage to turn ever instinct in your body around
And convince it to fuck itself over,
When the mere thought of food makes you want to vomit
Even when you haven’t eaten a meal in five days,
There’s no method or logic or reason behind it.
And that’s why I’m lost
Why I can’t fight it
Because it doesn’t fucking make sense
There is no structure to what I am going through,
Not to my identity or problems,
And that’s precisely what’s so tragic about my story -
There’s no structure,
There’s no plot,
There’s no happy fucking ending.
It just continues on and on and on,
Until one day it doesn’t.
And maybe one day down the line,
It will be begin once more,
But once your narrative has been poisoned,
It plagues you,
Over and over and over again
No matter how many times you thought you finally won,
And each time I’m left sprawled on the cold wet floor,
Fused with the putrid smell of acid,
Screaming and bawling:
Why can’t I be skinny?
I’ve given so much,
I’ve worked so hard, so fucking hard.
I’ve donated sweat and tears,
Sacrificed bile and blood, but
Where’s my happily ever after? My American dream?
- Bullshit -
That’s how I feel right now,
Just raw, wilting despair,
And I can’t tell if it’s just my crippling sense of hunger
Or the cold pity I feel for myself,
Dwelling in the sad hope
That maybe it makes me special,
Maybe it makes me one of a kind,
Maybe it makes my pain worse than other people -
But then again, that’s just absurd.
Pain is beauty,
And I am not beautiful.
by Trang Le
Mother -
when you die, whose songs will I sing?
Words have ebbed themselves away from me the
day I learned god does not reside in his
church. He left an empty hall to echo
my doubts.
Had I strike red stepping out of
your womb, I would have saved the both of us.
My mouth never learned satisfaction.
Eating out of your bowl was a daily prayer. Your pestle mocked me for all the grains of rice I could not swallow.
In another world grains of white would drown
out both our hunger, yours seeping to survive.
And mine wanting to cry.
In another world my tongue would lull you to
sleep. So that you do not die of time, of
silence, of us.
In another world, you will understand
the day your daughter decides to forget in
order to breath.
handwash
by Trang Le
Handwash. Dry flat.
Mother -
1. Undo my seam.
2. Lay my skin under the sun.
3. Collect my bones.
4. Bleach out the odor of your home.
speak
by Trang Le
My words speak to you, neither of us understanding the
Droplets of hello and I am ok
Trickling down into a basin reflecting our broken tongues
Glistening with our shame
We watched as they turned to pearls, grind to dust
Because I was too busy being American
Because I was too busy being cool
To say,
Mẹ,
Mẹ khỏe không?
Con nhớ mẹ.
by Trang Le
My mouth is wet from this new motherland. I swallow her milk.
She comes easily, quenching my thirst. Nightmares behind closed lids are
no monsters when inked on crumpled papers.
&
I hungered, I swallowed, too comfortable to change.
&
I have grown to forget you. You and your chè.
You and your motherland. You and your thick accents.
&
You watched me smother myself in gluttony.