lament.
find a firebrand and follow,
maybe fondle them. steep
a cup of tea and blow on it
’til your jowls turn sour
The managers of Lunch Ticket all agreed that issue 26 needed to have a theme, and that theme had a responsibility to call for work relating to what we are seeing in society. We wanted a theme that resonated with Antioch University MFA’s mission of advancing “racial, social, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice,” and we felt it was time to take a stand, to let others know our thoughts and feelings on today’s state of affairs, that we stand in community with those fighting against the various systems of oppression and those demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
I usually say writer or teacher, and then they ask me what I teach, and I say writing. And then they say: what kind of writing do you teach? And then I say poetry.
Dear Former Neighbor:
It’s been years since we were neighbors. Our children are grown up and are making their own ways in the world, yet you came to mind when I recently read the poem, “I am the Rage” by Dr. Martina McGowan.
One evening you called me, “Valerie, I wanted to talk to you. I’m not sure if you’re aware of what happened between Hailey and John?”
This visual narrative intricately explores my journey of healing from an abusive relationship through a minimalist approach to line art. Composed of four images sewn together, each stage—”She & Him,” “She Cries,” “She’s Free,” and “She Thinks”—is represented by a delicate red thread, symbolizing both the pain and resilience that threads through the fabric of my identity.
I was the only one of my friends without a cassette player, except for Lily, whose father was the head of the Party’s neighborhood branch. Even if they had the money, he would have never allowed it, fearing that music from the West would poison her mind with capitalist ideas.
I think about infrastructure in terms of systems. I like to think of the types of spaces and publics that I’ve occupied at various points in my life: as a queer person of color, as a queer Latinx, queer Chicana, queer Latino/a child of immigrants, and all the ways that (these spaces and publics) facilitate cross-class, cross-group contact.
actually came to write for middle grades by accident. When I first started working on See You in the Cosmos, I just had this idea for a story about a boy and his dog trying to launch his iPod into space. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about the age of my audience; I was just trying to tell a good story.
It’s been good, but weird not working on that book anymore. I blocked off the summer to clear my mind and figure out what’s next. I usually juggle multiple projects, but that book took everything I had. Finishing it, then the tour and promotion—it took a while to come down from it.
A sky full of starless city yellow
poison tonight while the moon decides
whether to push or pull. These open streets
were lighter once, because no one left them.
you’ve died so many times in your dreams
that surely you can manage it once while awake.
the soul abandons the body a moment beforehand,
rising over what used to be home
Every year, the ocean pulls itself to either side so that mothers can be reunited with their children. So, that is where we waited, Yi-Jin and I—on Jindo Island. Hundreds of years ago, the small island across from Jindo, called Modo Island, became overrun with tigers that viciously attacked the villagers. Everyone fled to Jindo, leaving the tigers to resort to cannibalism and eventually starve to death.
You spin away on the elliptical, adding klicks and minutes without going anywhere. Biting back against the extra pounds that threaten to consume you. This is how you completed your first 5K at the height of the pandemic.
In the summer of 2018, my then-wife and I spent a weekend in the beautiful “village” of Alfama. We rented what I can only describe as a cavern of a studio in what would become my most favorite part of the city. The apartamento was ridiculously small, with only one window and a bed pushed into a cave-like opening against the wall. It was tight and hot and absolutely perfect.
but here is how we name the birds, says Kawenniostha
in Kanienkeha: by the sounds, by their voices
how they talk about the weather
yoro, yoro on an overcast day
How much is the land? How
much to get fish fresh from the market
and how much for the fishermen
to feed their families? How much for
a loved one who doesn’t leave?
When my co-citizens tell me “why don’t you go back to where you’re from?” it’s obvious that it never crossed their mind that I’m exactly in the one country that I’ve ever known: Italy. The place where I was born and raised. The place where I made my entrance into this world, and where I intend to live every one of my days until the very end.
The Juvenile Psych Ward, where we are right now, is not a “Psych Ward.” It’s a “Child Development Unit.”
Calling it a Psych Ward is like admitting the thing on your foot really is a toe fungus. It’s gross; you’d rather not look at it; and in certain situations it’s downright embarrassing
I’m in bed. The house is silent, no one’s here but me. Me and my demons. Don’t think of what most scares you, I tell myself. Don’t let fear invade you. Of course, I know the pink elephant trick: my mind instantly wanders back to my most haunting ghosts. Tonight it’s an eerie scene from a murder mystery I watched.
My preferred route, the one I take most often, is considered the “back way,” avoiding the busier streets clogged by the construction of my city’s attempt at a working public transportation system. The other route is the busier one I try to avoid: quicker, yes, but with a high possibility of construction and traffic.
On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, Envy Nail & Spa is an explosion of pink. Pale pink like rosé and the velvety petals of peonies. Hot pink like bubblegum and the ruffled edges of sunset.
From my childhood, I remember the slides from Park Missouri, the green aluminum rocket that smelled like piss, rides where I would go round and round, gripping the iron bars, like a Papantla Flyer, but upside down. If you weren’t careful, the chains would hit you.
I remember stopping on the highway and going to a restaurant in Villa de Santiago
The war went on. After each battle, the casualties were laid side by side beside the pit. Their handlers, the men who had fetched them from the field and medic’s station, rested on the mound of dirt exhumed from the pit, smoking cigarettes, choking on stale biscuits. Sewn inside their canvas coffins, the casualties looked like a regiment of bedrolls.
My bus driver, Pete, wore his hair longer than any adult male I knew, except for my dad, back when he was an honest to God hippy. I have a photograph of my father as a young man, his copper hair cresting his belt buckle, about four inches longer than Pete’s.
to winter. Your body is Indiana
strung between better states.
You found a man who thought
everything worthy was broken,
wanted to fix roofs and engines
Brilliant, she thought, studying her own face. Following
the lines like little eroded paths down a hill of dirt.
At the bottom of anything is the top of something.
Before bed she pulls the blinds down in specific order,
then she taps each wall three times with her right pointer finger.
Grief is weird. Many of us know about the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), so I will save you the details of what that entails and how we move through each of them, sometimes without even realizing it. Sometimes even years later. But what happens after these stages? What happens years later when you look up at the sky?
The tooth Shelley wore around her neck belonged to her stepbrother, Archer. It shifted around in a glass orb affixed to a silver chain that swung across her heart as she ran after the bus.
There were four hard knocks on the door; the kind only the police made. We froze, every muscle still, breath slowing down. My eyes focused firmly on the hardwood floor, tears slow-danced down my cheeks, snot bubbles in my eight-year-old nose, little fists clenched. The loud squeaking of the front door, in desperate need of WD-40, signaled Mom had opened it.
Thank you for the compliment. I needed to tell the story of this marriage—to show what covert abuse really looks like—in painstaking detail. People love to say that Marriage takes work. All over the world, domestic abuse victims are thinking, Wow, I guess this is the work that everyone’s talking about.
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