Jessica Yuan Agriculture I am on my second date with Trader Joe and I think I’m fallingfor him. He holds my hand and I taste soil. I close my eyesand float fluorescent. He hands me a tomatoand I ripen to this. I think he likes me too. He whispers in my ear, “There is […]
Karen An-Hwei Lee Nonce Ode to an Oxymoron How could I ever love such a contrary figure of speech? Say we never vowed ourselves to a neurosis of nonce verse, of fever chills or brazier darkness.Say we drove to a landlocked shore, rolled up our windows at night,listened to the bright surf pounding […]
Read More… from Nonce Ode to an Oxymoron – Karen An-Hwei Lee
Letisia Cruz Promise I lined her eyesand held her wristsstill. I carved her neck longso that when the rains cameshe might hold it abovewater. You will not drown,I promised her. But then hermouth and eyes filled and Ilet them. * Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is a […]
Natalia Theodoridou The Tide A strange day, this. It feels foreign, borrowed, and, for that very reason, sensitive; touch it, and it might drip, or darken, suddenly and irrevocably. It was on such a day that I chose to wake up—and why, nine months later, nine sooner, what’s the difference; but I did wake […]
Anuradha Bhowmik Growing Old With Baba I wore coats of clear nail polish in first grade,and Baba kept my fingernails safe from yellowmasala stains when he fed me rice and torkari in molded mounds that bordered the Corelleplate like a clock. At that age in Bangladesh,Baba would’ve been in Class 1, where he ate […]
Su Hwang Latchkeys When headlights cast shadowpuppets against the livingroom wall, my brother and I didour best to keep upappearances: he’d scurryto turn off the Nintendoconsole while I hung upon my best friend. He splayedopen his biology textbook, I leaptto the upright Yamaha to playthe first few notes of Für Elise:a perfectly choreographedintermezzo for […]
Yael Massen Klezmers on Tour after Josef Gusikov The cow breaks the barbedwire fence, feasts on grassessweet & tall in the minefield. No Man’s Land made metaland rusting in overgrowth.Josef watches each hoof plod the cow’s great heft like a wirewalker. Brown Spots! Mameleh!Hey! He calls, sets down his suit- case: inside the […]
Grace Loh Prasad Album The Man in the Suit (1960) On the observation deck of Sungshan International Airport in Taipei, a young man smiles at someone invisible, revealing white teeth. His shiny black hair is newly trimmed, and his horn-rimmed glasses rest on cheekbones made more prominent by the dismal rations he received during […]
S. Isabel Choi Her Prayer “You two, and my time with God, are the only things that keep me,” said a mother to her daughters. She focused on the square brass clock mounted on the wall ahead of her: 2:43 p.m. It was Wednesday, October 28, 1992. The day we waited, waited for God […]
Qinglan Wang Lessons Native Ghost I am a brash and jaded eighteen-year-old. I sulk in my seat next to Aunty Yilan on a fourteen-hour flight from Honolulu to Shanghai. It is my first return since I left for Berlin at the age of four. No one had asked if I wanted to go. No, […]
