Poetry
Contest Winner
“origin story, with crow”
—on the occasion of Earth Day 2023 ㅤ The crow’s wing is a blade slicing the ocean open: ㅤ inside, the usual offal—birds’ nests of old transatlantic cable, fists of seagrass ㅤ...
“Horse Girls”
for JL, et al. ㅤ We are horse girls, you and I, dreaming of destrier muscles and cathedral-arch ㅤ necks, of hooves hard- packing earth, and of dust-kissed ㅤ lashes splitting sunlight...
“Eels”
You consulted your zodiac, and your sign had changed to eels. You wrote a personality test, and the results came back eels. You drew seven cards, and the cups and the stars...
“Pig”
I wake to find that in all my childhood memories our family dog has been replaced by a pig. Although I still have the photographs that confirm soft fur and sad eyes,...
“A Short Play Featuring Neural Pathways”
Cast You: a battleship, set adrift by the faculties of your mind, unmoored & searching for a life preserver, which you found in me: a scarecrow, overall-patch girl, enough straw to float...
“Autobiography”
I brisk walk with the breeze every morning. By noon I am the ardor of a tornado. I am born on the last Sunday of every month. I am working on a...
“PORTRAIT OF DIASPORA AS AN EPIPHANY”
Father says beware of snakes walking on two legs— reptiles who will open the door of your beautiful name to mispronunciation; quiz & other you around. This country, she makes a room...
“L’dor Va’dor”
We can’t pinpoint the original wound that made parents of all our family’s daughters set our teeth to points. My bubbe dies vicariously on ancestry.com squirrels away names and townships, aims correspondence...
“A Reverse Elegy (wherein the hands of the clock are the hands of a baby who has yet to discover she has hands)”
“In another time I knew so much about you.” —Agha Shahid Ali I remember you well, mother, fluming like in-bloom magnolias unstitched by wind, to the August sauna of our Honda. At...