Articles

I used to keep journals as a child, like we all have, and I wrote silly short stories or plays. I did not take writing seriously as a career, pathway, or even hobby until my sophomore year of college when, on a whim, I changed my major to Creative Writing.

Ours, it turns out,
was neither the world
as will, nor reverie—

engines full throttle,
instinct the piston,
strife the fuel.

Welcome to Bellingham Review’s Issue 81, our tenth annual online issue! Inside you will find the stunning work of sixteen different artists including writers of nonfiction, fiction, hybrid, and poetry.

We were traveling in Melbourne Australia back in January of 2018. The location was at the entrance to the Melbourne Museum of Art. The image was made looking through a window that had water running down on the outside.

My mother asked me to stop by the house to meet the latest arrivals. It was Saturday night and, having recently moved back to the Bay Area, I didn’t have any plans. I got there just as they were sitting down to dinner.

When it’s over, I wash
prayers and curses out of my hair.
I stuff them into a pillow.
I sleep.
There are no dreams.
I’m not haunted by the lives I take.

In my dream, we’re all
in bumper cars—
some blue, some red,
some a mix of orange and yellow.
The cars have huge front
and tail ends, like a ’59 Cadillac,
except they’re encased in rubber.

it means son who is of my right hand
it means that the son, who let’s face it,
has been ignored until now, is stuck inside
a telephone booth. He is being used and
taken into the back freezers to trim raw
chicken he is slicing off the wobbly bits
being picky and calculating if the hen’s
breasts are worthy with his right hand he tests
himself the left one could go on forever and he
wouldn’t come like a king

the glass woman is an empty feeling and an enactment of power
the bubbling up of a spectacular nasty
the pink velour fabric that cools the hairs on your thighs
the hairs that stick out of the black tights and itch so damn bad

You bring out the emerging QTPOC poet in me.
The only fits in a three dimensional Venn diagram in me.
The she hasn’t taken an English class since high school,
who does she think she is, in me.
The woman-loving-woman, yes also married to a man in me.