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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 …

You are tired of what cloys, what heavies your tongue as if to coat your body in whipped oil and vinegar. You are drainedand puckered as a sheet left too many years in salt water, then parched as a plant struggling to keep its rousable nature. You close your eyes and imagine fruit as color …

“Rice Farmer,” 2024 Medium: brown rice, white rice, black rice, farro, yellow lentils, chickpeas, mung beans, and acrylic “Rice Farmer” was featured in What You Bring to the Table at Slip Gallery, curated by Alaina Stocker Artist statement: My piece “Rice Farmer” is part of a series I’m working on called “Rice, Roots, and the …

Winner of the 2024 49th Parallel Award (Poetry) Touch the soft space beneath my clavicle from the port they removed. Or the radiation tattoos. Blurred ink stains on favorite linens. Here the holes burrowed into my liver because I let them take the healthy breast along with the diseased, but what else was I supposed …

It wasn’t that she was beautiful. I was nineteen and bulimic and all that mattered was being beautiful but Cece wasn’t beautiful, something off about her jaw from when they broke it to fix her underbite, dirty blond hair knotted carelessly on top of her head years before top knots were cool. It wasn’t the …

This city unstrings its fingerbones, unravels the dressI hide behind; doorsfixed shut, eyes on every clock blind. Solitaire cards played in the dark This is no game; I’ve seen it all before. picking petals off daisiesdrawn on my skin by his desire.The river’s polluted, the lake fire, my rowboatrotten wood. I’ve seenstrange things Lady, I’m …

“Luzon’s coastlines are receding.” – Lois Calderon, “Philippine coastline receding because of Chinese mining black sand,” CNN Philippines, May 27, 2021 Your brows reveal untapped coast, fresh ores, endless archives. Listen as your marrow seeds a winged spell. Listen for carapace stroking new waters. Listen to ocean as it murmurs to black sand. Listen to …

Carrie didn’t have any kind of visa to stay in the country. Her tourist visa had run out six months prior and she’d ended up working for cash at her friend Marianne’s holistic bookstore. That was where she met Bruce. Twice a week he came in to do healing sessions in the back room and …

Winner of the 2024 Tobias Wolff Award (Fiction) I always felt that the Aquarium was the eye of the city. From the top, it looked like a deep well that cast a shimmering dark blue shadow on people’s faces, making them seem transparent. The circular corridors of the gallery enclosed it like the Colosseum. Wearing …