Poetry

the golden oak kitchen cabinet crashed to the floor this morning just as I was simmering a dream of caribou and wolves nearly clipped the corner off the sleepfog swirling like eggs in a teflon frypan a mug of tea splattered when it slipped my grip shocked by the shriek of the cabinet’s unhinging now …

give me a spoon,shallow bowl oftarnished silver,ornate handleleft over fromyour grandmother’syouth. a grapefruitspoon, its tinyserrated edgemade to cut throughtender skin andunholy flesh.give me a spoonand I will diga tunnel tochina, startingwith my body,carving deeperand deeper andinto my gut,under my ribs,serving up myentrails, one smallscoop at a time. Brittany Davis (She/They) is a lesbian, transfemme poet …

your mark on blue-black canvasundertones of summer sunsets &pink peonies & pinã.risk the strokewithout guide or conjurer;this is yours.etch the lines of locs inside outto coiled veins & arteries.let shadowbright crevice your face.allow what arises first to be enough. stare boldly in its eyes syncopated cackle at your reflection.rinse each brushed experiencefully anew –there is …

Some things you can’t prepare for—the widow knows where the important papersare, but her fingers won’t work the lock.And when my mother died, and I stood up,I found for a moment that I couldn’t walk.So it was when I sat beside youin the room for the gravely ill,and though I saw you wanted a sip …

Nothing will come of nothing,which holds true too for the meagerlapels we fashioned from piedand unblinking marigolds, holdstrue even for the snapdragonsyet unready for picking, the goldenraspberries, the wooden basinof straw somebody’d named Music.I looked at you; I thought good thoughts;we debated whether that raptorworlds away with its wingsoutspread was a hawk or a vulture.I …

At nine, māmā wound a leash around my tongue and tugged the meat loose until I spat out syllables, how a spooked dogwould let go of its marred bone. I ironed out my words, slept with a mantle on my tongue, and beat my mouth into submission. Inflections don’t exist in English, a single word …

it replies after I select the department Asian Studies in a dropdown tab, enter the experienceFilipino into the university course search engine.I make mediocre waves of it, I know that single grains of rice that settle far from their plated centre mass get forgotten about, left unspooned, uncelebrated, drowned by the end water of dishwashing …

Dear Su,Today I talked to a teen monk about our age. I wanted to find if there is escape from suffering in what he does: you know, wearing yellow robes, learning Pali chants, skipping dinner, no contact with girls and all. He didn’t know either, but he said the process needs to be carried on …

Dear Su,Funerals have become the only event in my country. Tiny rows of white flags stretch from one pole to the next like the sky’s teardrop strings. This is how we announce a funeral in the community. When the elements turn them yellow, people now let them be as if to mean they can’t do …

A shrug of limbs:gambrel symmetry:a hallway of parkway treesarch filling green middle of May thick:maple, elm, oak.But the ash borerand the city crews:whole blocks reducedto sap splinter chips.The crows black on the grey stainon the branchesat a distanceyammer warntoss syllables:two beats, three beatsfour beatsraw as frictionacross the parking lot.Like felt cut outs, like stencilslike watercolor …