Issue 27
Since 9/11, my dad refused to get on a plane; so he, my sister Vanessa, and I were forced to endure the twenty-hour marathon train ride…
In class, I’m afraid to put my hand up. I’m not big enough to notice, but now I sense that everyone has x-ray vision…
The salt their nectar.
Your sorrow and ocular muscles
they chew and spit out
as honeycomb
the first time I had sex
I heard voices in the hall
and risked everything to listen
I ate a rose-pink bird,
it hums in my mouth.
When I cry, a sweet
flutter forms emerald
tears singing of moss
my head throbs in tune to the organ’s wailing and my back aches against the pew polished by thousands of asses and sweating palms before…
All-steel body,
nickeled radiator,
& deeply cushioned seats –
You had a streamline effect.
He wasn’t much taller than me and looked like he’d served in the Navy, crewcut and Popeye forearms. He stared at me for a moment and then down at the bike.
It was Christmas again. I have always told people I liked to spend Christmas alone, but that wasn’t entirely true.
I oozed from tabernacle brack
amid caterwaultails
gushthrushes deltalillies
My sister and I stand side-by-side on the rocky beach. Below us the clear water of Garrett Bay gathers speed, crashing to the shore, splashing…
Side by side in the old Ford F150, past the badlands of South Dakota and mustard fields of Alberta, we finally reached the Alaskan island…
from memories to broken toys —
i keep everything — hoping to recycle
them into a poem. or story.
Our son’s called Le Tian
in his Mandarin school, a name
his grandmother—his Po—
gave him.
for you, watch myself weave
through spindle and spine, I’ll wrap
around your mannequin form.
was the nickname we gave to an aunt on my mother’s side, she
never missed a day of church