You fly 4 hours to your mother’s province whereat lunch, your family listens to the chismis of the barrio while you speak to the itlog and the bagoong and last night’s rice,to the bangus on your plate that your mom debones…
Browsing Category Prose, Poetry, and Art
She Gets a Break
for Wọgọwanyị Great-grandmother was a woman sold twice, ransomed twice from slavers on the way to Calabar or Bonny dispossessed widow at the mercy of the world In duty she was bound twice— first, by…
brisé (broken) volé (flying) blue
After the leaves fell over the courtyard, I saw you coming. Potholes heavy with bouncing sparrows became heart-throb. Every butterfly whirring, every puppy pulling skeins of tossed cloth was a blessing. Near hoarfrost I stared at your photograph;…
The Plastic Horse
My dead brother-in-law is inside our old toy rocking horse. Recently, we watched that Netflix documentary—you know, the one about dying, ghosts, reincarnation, etc. What I’m saying is that I literally believe my dead brother-in-law…
O, Susanna
Twelve and my breasts begin their slow swell, moon-bright in the seventh month of my slumber. This strange sheen, as within the begonia’s waxy heart, my neck spreading its blush when, in front of my…