In Charlotte, where winter brings no guarantee of snow, small children press their palms together, close their eyes so tight they see waves of color, and plead with God to unzip heaven…
“Coming from an ethnic background and living in a diverse city like Los Angeles, my work reflects my identity as an Asian American…”
Single life is-tequila with lime, / shots of travelers, jacks, diamonds, and then spades, / holding back aces- / mocking jokers / paraplegic aged tumblers of the night trip.…
I want to die the way my dog sleeps / a tiny, take-up-no-room-curl. / I want to live like him, too, / rising twice or thrice a day, / a lift up from a stomach, / a grin to an n, / a head-to-tail unfurl…
When cities are burning / and children sleep in your bed / you can’t measure suffering / like sugar, one tablespoon / at a time…
I lost my virginity while the dragon fell. When the enormous canvas beast faltered, people flocked beneath it. Maybe they hoped their attention would encourage it to stay aloft in the dead air, like zealots of a dying god refusing to believe its power could ever wane….
“I trespass in abandoned houses. I spy on the people who once lived inside, watching them through the telescope of time…”
The following three found poems are from the collection Roger That […]
In the downpour / a pair of cobras slithers / into the resort / and the restaurant empties / of foreigners. / The boy sets his tray of drinks / on a table and runs for the itak / he isn’t supposed to keep / in his locker, but does…
I haven’t been to the place where my father isn’t buried, only ashes and the idea of him. I haven’t said my goodbyes over the patch of grass where his body doesn’t lay….
Hindu Santa stashes / boxes of Just for Men / under the bathroom / sink, bare scalp painted / black with faded tooth / brush bristles. Barbasol…
I construct intimate artworks that investigate the gross romance between person and location…
We wandered your city / for five days, hemmed within / those same cobbled creases, / tucked between brownstones- / mordant lines grown soft / in the damp October night…
Here’s the peach bathroom / that gave her new ways / to look taller—
There are two worlds those with the privilege of portable technology inhabit…
Our eyes tripped over a four-by-four inch bronze memorial embedded in a sidewalk in Cologne, Germany…
Today you follow the holes / birds clawed into the sky…
There was a pecan tree that dropped nuts across the crabgrass that surrounded her parents’ bungalow-style home. She introduced me to her rat-dog and its seven grown puppies that surrounded me, yapping away my patience, each of them dirty and unclaimed…
Lena. Just Lena. My mother didn’t have a middle name, which I thought smacked of parsimony—shortchanged at birth…
In my next life I will come back as a Wild Mountain Woman…
Inside the brain of a bank, / where the world is, / I sold my breath/ but then my breath was taken/ and sold back to me…
We both tried to kill ourselves, you with / pills, me, with a razor and a bottle of wine…
A collection of surreal ink drawings inspired by sacred geometry exploring the relationship between human perceptions and impossible worlds…
Even on 5th avenue, it costs money to die. / Especially if you die in a Taco Bell drive-through / or in the kitchenware aisle of Macy’s; it costs / money to die even if you flop down dead / in your own flower garden…
In a bed/ in an ink-wash of night sky/ a Chagall dreamer rises/ An omniscient moon/ hovers above the pines…
While mowing the lawn, a small bird flew into my chest and stuck there. It’s America. I can’t afford health insurance…
You asked me once at dawn about forgiveness and I said
I didn’t think you had any need to be forgiven and you said
nothing…
On the first day there was stillness. For a moment nothing moved. The wind held its breath. The birds stopped in midflight—their wings pinned against the blurry space of sky.
Woman, where is your crown? Why do you stand there dumb-founded? It does not abide in the swivel of your hips or the bouncing of your breasts!
It keeps showing up like a complaint no one has answered for…
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
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