Articles

Bellingham Review is so excited to share with you a folio of poetry that emerged from the 50th Association for Ethnic Studies Conference at California State University, Los Angeles, in 2022. This poetry folio on home, nourishment, and community features the creative work of Shayda Kafai, María I. Morales-Sánchez, Nicole Leopardo, and Pau Abustan. Poetry …

I first encountered asemic writing through the work of Christopher Patton, which I’ve seen both sprawling across his wooden dining table and in museum shows. Asemic writing carefully curates its materials, and I am honored to have had my junk mail reborn in one of Chris’s works. The piece was titled “Siri Falls Among the …

I was in a room with Gertrude Stein and some undergrads. We were meeting indeterminacy together for the first time. I drew a messy sketch on the blackboard, little overlapping circles inside a bigger lumpy vaguely circle thing. —Anyone know what this is? I thought I was being funny. My illegible handwriting and inscrutable diagrams …

The podcast host asks “When did you realize you’re queer?” but no age counts the same knuckles, wrinkles and twinks, ear and armpit hairs, orthopedic aches the real daddy, time kudzuing reason, premature efforts to fit in and feel good when feeling different is always the first queer feeling. “What was the thing that made …

Hanggang Sa Muli We see our dead everywhere. A butterfly, a bat—Lola? Dad? Is that you? Just today, I saw my father in the long finger of an okra, overgrown past peak deliciousness. It waggled at me— naku, not even good for deep-frying!— and reminded: tingnan mo! Always look close at your garden, at your …

You can read/view Michelle Peñaloza’s poems and collages in BR’s Issue 86 here. I. I started making collages at the start of this year, the day after I learned the pregnancy, we’d been trying to make happen for two years, was not viable. The day I waited for a way to help my body—what is …

“Falling In Love on the Pow Wow Grounds” Medium: Digital This piece was created to celebrate indigenous femmes, joy, and love. I also created this piece for me, as a way to celebrate my own later in life coming out. Savannah LeCornu is an Indigenous artist and theatre maker originally from Ketchikan, Alaska who now …

Snowfield I was in the brightness of day that lives beyond the fir trees, I walked on fields and mountains of light — I crossed dead lakes — the captive waves whispered a secret song to me — I passed over white banks, called the dormant gentians by name — I dreamed in the snow …

a canoe no I am on a canoe paddling in water so deep I lose my reflection I am paddling no I quit paddling I lay my paddle in the water watch it float like a flat canoe I am surprised not everything sinks I stand up and the canoe shakes it would be easy …

Every dead child comes back. The cities crowd out from north to south. Blink and they’re fine, blink again and they look exactly how we left them under the water, under the earth, bound and destroyed. The ones burned look fine, except when you squint and they resemble walking ash in the form of a …