Articles

Please put the hearts on a skewer—you can call theman appetizer if you want to, charge me more than they are worth. I’ll buy it. I only have an appetite for what’s unwanted;all the foods I grew up on now made gourmet.It’s the fish collar I want, bony triangle of tendertucked between the gills, a …

I imagine my true tongue ignitinghis fist—see my future prophecy losing its grip, swinging to make blue-blackmy eye, but I won’t die. I call my sister, rehearsing what she’ll say: Run away.Come home. I’m nearer than the road suggests. I feel my chest heave a century of women leaving scared & singing with straight spine …

I am sitting on the futon wondering when I will earn my parentsa house. A poet in Vietnamese is nhà thơ, thus, the body is a housefor the poem. I want to contain more than one. Maybethis is too much to ask because my parents never got the chanceto learn more than what they already …

Sophie Drukman-Feldstein is a writer, translator, and editor living in New York City. Their poetry has previously appeared in Contemporary Verse 2.

once, in America, I told a girl white as salt that I used to shake it straight fromits silver can into my mouth, & swallow. she told me to stop lying. but I’m the kindof human who scrapes & pinches the crumbs at the bottom of the bag of hot chips, who licksthumb & pointer …

Some days I am full of hope Others, a single thing could kill me: a weed where I’ve already weeded, twice the clerk muttering Sir uhhh ma’am one wisp of cloud in the clear blue Some days I am full of things Others, a single hope could kill me: that you already did the dishes …

I had a dream where I brought you back to life. No power tools, just grief; gummy bears, my eucharist. I refrained from paraphrasing my sadness and planked on your grave. The clear vowels of my cry, echoing from head-stone to headstone; the illusion of sibling harmony. From that cry, you rose;I told you I …

My friend is picking meat from a bone when she says her marriage has become bland. Calling it a bone doesn’t paint a clear picture. Could be the leg of a deer? A horse? I ask if she wants the number for my therapist. My feelings are what they are, she says. They’re not going …

after some thought I was plucked into existence, from a swirling moving pool of energetic laughter and repeated sinning due for resurrection. yes I sensed there was gnawing and aching. curling yellow nails scraping up shards of marble grass weeds and dandelion fur must have spilled out, a childhood secretunderneath inches of incense ash tucked …

The sagging steel door scrapes across concrete as you and Momma step into Jeff’s Auto Shop. The ever-present gallery of girlie posters are suspended in a haze of cigarette smoke and engine fumes. Women lounge on motorcycles, cars, beaches. Several pose in string bikinis, cradling power tools. None of them are smiling, exactly, and a …