Every person on the sixth-floor terrace is like a long take Every person on the sixth-floor terrace is like a long take There is a small garden on the sixth floor of the hospital but I prefer to call it: the terrace open-air, a romantic way to call it People on the sixth-floor terrace they're…

Eating alone White rice topped with beef curry gravy, beef rendang, garlicky morning glory greens, jackfruit curry with lots of turmeric, sweet and sour cucumber salad, and sambal as fruity as it is fiery— it's a plate I would have liked to share with you, finishing with a kiss that tastes of…

Eclipse Ruddy and brown as desert stone, the moon slides into our shadow. Refraction paints the rock with sun, a bit like blood through a tinted window. I'm standing in the street alone, trying not to think of what I know: that you are moving on and nothing in this eclipse will show me anything…

Persephone in the Cath Lab No one tells you how the Underworld begins— not with pomegranates but paperwork. A nurse shaves my groin, the cold antiseptic blooms a warning. Hades wears a surgical mask. He does not speak, points to shadows on a screen– arteries like riverbeds gone dry. He wears…

How to use a bedpan Raise your hips like a bridge, try not to flinch when cold plastic connects with your warm bottom. Allow just to trickle at first to make sure your aim is true. You will get pee on yourself— there is no way around that. The surgical team will not wipe you or allow you to drip…

What the Pawpaw Knows (in memory of Ray Schafer) He left us quietly, a fog faded from the Allegheny, his hands smelling of Marlboros and mustiness from books he kept too long. His boots are still by the door, crumpled receipts he folded are secret maps in his coat pocket. I sit at his workbench,…

prayer (xxxix) i have missed the fluency of the darkness, in which silence finds its natural home. i have long felt the distance of something resembling a spiritual high. its memory rests like a relic. rain intensifies, clattering against the windows and the stained glass. motion erodes attention.…

The Yi Jun Peace Museum The Hague, Netherlands "It is not quite clear what this Korean museum offers to the general public. All information appears to be in the Korean language." – dutchmuseums.com each morning, they take the train across from Amsterdam to the Hague, an hour each way, hoisting and…

for Mu Xin Wuzhen. the museum is dark, dim, hospitable to the shades and silhouettes. the museum reflects the poet, the architect says, his fluency with darkness, his stammering in the shadows, his lights always lowered, or absent. the darkness inhabits the towering, grey museum, nestled in that…

writer’s notebook #3 Across the backyard, I want to shout: Come inside and let me wrap your hands In lotion and soft socks. I can see them turning Red against the brown and weak green. Let me bring a towel for your mud-soaked boots, And let me make you a cup of tea. Let me Pretend you are only…

afterparty You wake up to a mouse sniffing The damp cloth of your T-shirt, Barley overhead shaking its Head over your bruise-soft body. Mind shifts to the dirt underneath, Covered by a quilt. The quilt is Pilled, scratching the backs of your Ankles. You feel weak. His Grandmother is searching for…

Forklift. Water. And White Boxes Original by Fish Lu, translation by Xi Nan Friday, 11 June. A forklift appeared on the morning street, entered my sight. It moved slowly, steadily forward, making a heavy (dull) sound. The forks did not lift cut stone, nor cement stacked into a cube. The forklift…

Mother Original by Fish Lu, translation by Xi Nan My mother has died. This sentence holds at least three meanings: 1. I will never see my mother again. 2. I am a person without a mother. 3. Now "mother" for me is nothing more than a word. This is a reprint of work originally published in The First…

The First Time I Ate Saury Original by Fish Lu, translation by Xi Nan It was my first time eating a saury, but not for Xi. The saury was ready. There was only one of it. We thought there would be many. In the hot summer, a saury was lying across the plate, slender and sharp, like a dagger. I…

Encircled In Tromsǿ I lie as in a luge, aligned with the meridian, my feet pointing due North, ready to plunge. There are more yarn stores than we have Starbucks. Everyone is young. The only fat people are tourists. My aurora app pings five times an hour. All that going on above the rainclouds.…

The Maid’s Ledger The hotel has been standing longer than the city admits. It rises from the block like a kept secret, all velvet rot and gilt remorse. Its name has changed three times—each syllable peeling off like old wallpaper, but the women who clean it do not change at all. My mother scrubbed…

Exhalation The reef knows the ocean the way our bodies know breath. Water enters coral's thousand doors, carrying plankton, carrying the small drifting things that sustain it. The coral does not ask for the ocean. The ocean simply arrives at its porch, then leaves after completing its work. Breath…

Borrowed Skin I confess: I used you. I entered first love with trauma: my cells undone, each membrane pulled from its nucleus, gasping. So I turned to you, my friend. I wore your patience like borrowed skin, let your touch stitch my bones together. But your love was wintry light. I felt no heat.…

Reclamation For one year I was only a chalk outline, something the baby could erase. I pumped. I leaked. I offered. I disappeared into the mouth that needed me. I woke, slept, and woke again. I disappeared into the body that called for me. I want to be opened again, to feel the weight of hands…

My son The forest gives him to me in installments—first his weight and length, then the way his head finds the space between my breasts. The curve of my neck cradles where his skull is not yet closed, a temporary architecture. He roots for my breast, traveler from some other place. The giants in…

Still Here The orchid I meant to throw out months ago, stalk collapsed against the bathroom mirror, bloomed while I was away. Four white petals, thin as rice paper. Then six. Then a whole row opening, drinking light I didn't know was there. The petals, so fragile and white. The kind of white that…

Leather daddy I stopped having random panic attacks shopping at Costco. I don't feel anxiety about trying to find a parking spot and accidently ramming my car into the random cement pillar in the center of the top floor parking lot. Instead of rushing to get in and out of the building, I purposely…

Home for the Holidays I'm on the road But have no destination Born in the Scottish Highlands, Robertson Tait writes romantic comedy and suspenseful contemporary stories featuring gorgeous, confident heroines, imperfect but sensitive heroes, and intriguing locations described with a strong sense of…

If a deer could go to war Eira goes to battle today. Antler-less, she reports to the field, unfastening from the trees. In the cold her shape fidgets into nothingness: soon, she will forget body and air. But first, let me tell you about her commission. Today she is whole & hooved; she will…

Interstice, In Transit i. my hands clench the pole i am holding myself together like the metal chains connecting trains, i look at the do not walk between cars sign i have always been too broke to pay attention. in the reflection of the train car door i am someone i almost recognize ii. i don't…

Stillness, Centrifugal The psychiatrist asked at my screening if I had any hobbies. My twelfth birthday, I said, I planted three marigold seeds in bitten ground. Still. Three things to my name slept under frost. I talked about the climb—hands on ankles, the mountain facing backwards, this is how…

Pressing on My Asphalt Knees Tears fall like leaves in the cold nights of October. I mail my friend an annotated Lonely Planet of Guatemala. I am stuck in metaphors and with fears of leaving the oven on. I think of the courts that employed fools in the 1500s. I would have been a good fool...or…

How to Read a Menu (after Mary Douglas) I. When I lived in Germany, I refused to learn the language, refused to speak the language so I watched people while I dined outdoors at a Thai restaurant, the chef and waitstaff recognized us we tried to speak in English One day I sat facing a blonde German…

Geography Lessons You and I, our story really is about moving, boxes packed with books every move, piles and piles scattered just today I couldn't find Playing in the Dark You led us to the cities and countries I followed to talk to you I learned a language I hated and now everyone thinks I'm a…

An Eyelash Wish To wish for something without color is strange. A fish jumps towards the movie screen & out of the fishbowl. Lungs expand & pistachio crumbs. Two young girls twirl pollera skirts. Ants hike up a bedroom window—twenty-two & eudialyte. Palindromes. Orange juice drips from your chin…

A Woman from PopaYork* She bought a bag of ripe lychees and a cup of lime-bathed mango slices from the boy humming under a blue tarp by the side of the dirt road, and at the domino club the next day, she thought of his scratched hands peeling ribbons of red-orange skin as his crisálida1.…

The Storm’s Wife The tinny voice on the battery-operated radio called it a once in a lifetime storm. People said they were exaggerating. People also took precautions, because you could feel it in the air, the potential before the kinetic. The sky was the color of static. The grocery store had a…

(July 2) My Continuous Dream of Vehicular Manslaughter In every ending there is a bloody death in which the brakes stop working or I make a terrible mistake, confusing green with red, left pedal with right. My aunt yells when I cross my legs in the passenger seat so now I dream of crunch limbs…

Warrior Wound I walk away from you in a long dress and think that it means something. To you I am a blur of gingham only getting further away. Later I almost get hit by a motorcycle. I am high and you told me to live a little. You cry over spilt milk I cry for a Grandfather, almost curly hair, the…

Abecedarian Actually I am not at peace with the broken pavement, lost packages, cut cuticles that tells me sickness haunts even the good. Dogs make me cry in the library and because we have lost each other (April May etc.) this is my problem. Funk, in a funk my mother says, just like when the sun…

my anorexia speaks in old latin (bo bis bit) i know every tense of hunger and she knows me, new jersey, and purple walled bedrooms with a giraffe on the bed. (kid, teen, child, girl, young) everywhere i go i am sick and bilingual. tired and practicing my verbs. eat to eat to be eaten to starve to…

i swallow a cherry pit and i grow a cherry tree in my appendix i swallow a cherry pit and the boy from third grade brushes his teeth and says he likes me i swallow a cherry pit and my mom tells me like can mean different things i swallow a cherry pit and the cherry tree burst from my stomach i…

Half Return i imagine when we end, we will part beneath the banyan tree, its milky-sapped limbs weeping red figs into the fecund earth. there was always something backwards about us / always, we return here. roots that grew downward from nodes. the skies were never a possibility for us. throats…

Reflection in the Fire I wake to light knocking at the door where I stuff rags into the cracks to keep the dark in. The animals that live inside me crawl out one by one, glistening with the afterbirth of dream, gangly and uncertain in the world they've been forced into. They watch from odd &…

Vasayan: Once Pirates, Now Nurses A nurse with pirate blood means crossing picket lines after the hospital started bonusing scabs for showing up. A nurse with pirate blood means 7pm to 7am shifts for the overtime, $3 extra an hour, and sleeping wedged in the restroom stall so no one could see your…

Midnight ride past EXIT 23 a green canvas, framed in white, promising directions to towns that don't ask my name EXIT EXIT EXIT EXIT but the road doesn't answer and neither do I there is no exit only the mile continuing past where home should be not tonight Ryan Wade Biller is a recent graduate…

Homesick "Nature is not a place to visit. It is home." —Gary Snyder Take me back hard earth. Take me back lily pad and ant crawling over the warm summer rock, living life with no grief, no thought of such suffering. Take me back switchgrass much taller than I, and black fly who has landed on the…

The Doves For M The doves clutch to the rail of the balcony and call to you— They coo, they coo, they call to you to climb down off the ledge, to offer your shaky palms overflowing with seeds— The doves clutch to the rail of the balcony, and call to you— Ahrend Torrey is the author of This Moment…

The Winter Garden The roots remember what the sun once murmured through the hidden year; they hold the cold like something won, a vow the sleeping earth can hear. The garden keeps what we let fall— the breath we spent, the names we kept. It gathers them beneath it all and holds them where the seed…

1414 West Susquehanna For Matthew There was his collection of important miscellanies stowed in the closet–though no one found any signs of Merlin or unicorns. Instead, the smell of bleach mixed in with excrement—his stepbrother could not erase the evidence, but he did try to disinfect it. There…

Home Is a Rhythm from Home Is a Rhythm Home is not coordinates. It's percussion in the chest. It's Spanish shouted across shotgun houses. It's brass bands mourning and celebrating at the same time. It's brown skin sweating through Mardi Gras, pride louder than doubt. New Orleans raised me without…

Spoken Word for the Undocumented Heart from Home Is a Rhythm They call me illegal— as if existence requires approval. But jazz was once undocumented. So was blues. So was survival. I am unwritten history refusing erasure. I speak with the voices they taught to whisper. Every poem is a document.…

Immigrant Saints from Home Is a Rhythm We pray to saints who understand paperwork delays. Candles flicker like promises we're not sure the government will keep. Hands scarred from labor fold without complaint. Faith smells like sweat, like cement dust, like hope mixed with fear. My father kneels…

Black, Brown, and Breathing from Home Is a Rhythm In New Orleans, race is a rhythm you feel before you name it. I learned early who gets questioned, who gets forgiven, who gets buried with hashtags. Black pain taught me proximity. Brown skin taught me precarity. We share sidewalks, share looks…

Report Card from Home Is a Rhythm "Smart, but distracted," the teacher writes in red ink, as if my mind were wandering, isn't carrying history. I memorize presidents who never spoke my language. I read textbooks that forget people like me built the city after it drowned. At home, my parents speak…