Category: Uncategorized

When I was five years old

on Halloween,
hoarse from cackling and laughter,
my throat pinched as Mama showed
pictures of wide-open mouths
full of black, decaying teeth,
throwing out the sweets
I strained my arms to carry,
filling my bag with unsalted walnuts.
脑子会长聪明的 (your mind will grow sharp),
Mama placed a brain-shaped
nut on my palm.

As Mama swirled the rice bowl
under the kitchen faucet,
water filling with white grime,
I saw pieces of chipped, rotten teeth
blending between grains of brown rice,
a premonition of my gluttony.

When my tooth began to wobble,
I dumped my rice into the sink,
pressing the mush down the drain,
my stomach churning.

自豪– pride

When I was ten years old,
after I’d won my first piano contest,
Mama fought all praise with a constant response
of 哪里，哪里 (not at all, not at all).

When I asked Mama why she wasn’t proud,
she told me of a girl
who embraced applause,
grew arrogant in return.
One day, she collapsed,
face cold and gray,
yellow, stringy flesh
dribbling out her ears and mouth.

When her stomach was cut open,
there was a rind of white winter melon,
seeds sticky from freshness.

Each performance,
my hands felt stickier on the grand piano,
until one day,
the keys I had memorized were gone,
replaced with black seeds
placed uniformly on white melon guts.
Mama’s voice rang in the dissonance,
I was overconfident,
and now a seed was firmly planted inside me.

Mama refused to give me glances
until we reached the parking lot.
When I begged her,
the piano disappeared,
turning into the inside of a melon,
her voice cracked with anger,
你太天真 (you are too naive).

I didn’t cry until we returned home,
clutching my stomach
in the upstairs bathroom.

欲望– lust

When I was eighteen years old,
after I left for college,
Mama bid me
bring back a pale-skinned,
slim-faced Chinese boy.
你必须想未来 (you must think of your future),
masking her demand
with a caring tone.

The summer I came home,
Mama showed me pictures
of a family friend now engaged
to a man with glasses and neat hair
wearing a silver necklace and cross.

I couldn’t tell Mama of the girl
with long, rosy hair
round, sunny cheeks
she was amazed
by my white smile,
didn’t despise or fear
black, crumbling teeth or
the melon in my stomach,
caressing me to sleep,
held in the safety of my dreams.

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your
son.”
– Luke 15:21

Growing inside me,
a baby-toothed smile,
a girl I always dreamed of holding,
pressing my skin to her cheeks.

Grains of white rice swirl
between my fingers,
a young girl bobs in the water,
fragile and wavering.
How can I save her from drowning?

My phone rings four times,
a soft gasp seeping through the line

妈妈，我还能回家吗？(Mama, can I still come home?)

For you calm every storm with a smile,
I never wanted you to cry.
As sweet as cake on a birthday,
your breath brings back dead plants.
Radiants happiness like children in a toy store,
never a dull moment.
Softest, most gentle touch that wipes away tears,
you never went out without my hand.
Calming as the shore meets the sea,
laying on the couch next to me.
Blooming cherry blossoms on a cozy, spring day.
Gust of wind on a hot, summer day.
Like a shining star directing the way home,
To the person you once were.

And I say, and you say
Let’s fill it up! fill it up, this

Endless white
Expanse between us
The chasm of sadness. Life threw a curious one:

Dark gray Manhattan alleys
Scattered shades of
Quiet June trees

Caught in the undertow, a
Deep yearning
Unravels.

Unrepentance can be a stark
Yellow cab
Abandoned for the night

Sunburnt city, the Gotham
Of our times.

*
Anant Dhavale

A love that shows up everyday
The routine that holds the key,
Hard work I’ll never regret.

I’m infatuated with my results
Blood sweat and tears,
Adding life to my years
Leveling up, surpassing each tier.

Stepping into position
Accomplishing all my marks,
Who would have known this is where true love starts.

SELF!

Submitted by N.Mariah

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man—
not just any man,
but the one who waits in the quiet corners,
the one who does not rush to claim,
who lets the music rise and fall
before he dares to reach.

I have waltzed with fools and shadows,
spun dizzy beneath reckless stars,
given my hand to fleeting smiles
and mouths that lied sweetly in the dark.
But the last dance—ah, the last—
I keep close,
tucked in the secret chamber of my heart,
untouched by clumsy hands or careless charm.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows the weight of waiting,
who understands that the final song
is not a hurried thing,
but sacred—measured in heartbeats,
in the hush between breaths,
in the knowing glance across a quiet room.

For the first dance is for the eager,
the bold, the untested.
The second for the curious,
the hungry and the hopeful.
But the last—oh, the last—
belongs to the patient one,
the one who stays
when all the music has faded,
when the lights are low
and the floor is bare.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows this truth:
that the final step, the final turn,
is the only one that matters.
And in that moment—
when all has been spun, spent, and stilled—
I will rise, smiling,
and offer him my hand.

For the last dance is not for the world.
It is for him.
And for me.
And no one else.

your face is a peach
in this softened coral cloud
of dimmed lights and no fuzz
there’s no pit, no pare

your lips curve like the moon
a waxing gibbous softly smiling
to cast lights and shadows
across your tilted jaw

you’re wrapped in silk
but there are no sheets
just pointedly curling legs
and dancing pastel fingers

so when I close my eyes
I feel your vined limbs
wrap me up, tangling
like ivy through my mind

I have brown eyes,
Because I come from mother earth.
I get around, just like any other dirt.
My daddy stay gone like the wind,
And that is why the sun will shine and he be’ (Annie B.) smiling.
And when it rains, you can feel his pain.
And that is why mama cries, and she can make anything.
And that is why my eyes R brown.

©™Midheaven Subconsciousness©

ICE doesn’t only come
in the dead of winter –
but also when
the early summer
sun was meant to grace
the dappled green trees
in the parks, when children
clamor for lazy days
spent lolling on sparkling
beaches, the books
they borrowed last week
irreparable and evermore

covered in sand – the food
trucks gathering in lines,

reminding us of our

more acceptable hungers –
the afternoon stretching on
for an eternity – a million more
lives to live in pages
laying on dark shelves
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
the librarians post, you know
it’s bad, when the librarians
encourage you to resist…
tuck your tarjetas rojas next
to your library cards – and keep
both close to your heart
three branches across the city
of angels close their doors

to PROTECT
the PEOPLE
they SERVE

if they’d come today –
how sad to say, the library
was not a safe place
across the country, the world –
third spaces cry
In solidarity –

the library is for everyone…

except you

(This is in response to the three LA Public Libraries closing their doors, to keep their patrons safe, during last weekend’s ICE raids)

my initiation deepens
I sit and listen to your yesterwounds

nothing has changed
everything is changing

deep change goes by many names.
the songs are different?

the words are the same
the times polluted.

the ground still shakes
and there are shards falling

sister, we are still here
after the witch hunt
sister. we are still becoming

buried burgeoning I would
like everyone to start screaming.

my hands tremble when I speak

press the megaphone so close
to your lips, you almost swallow it

to hear my voice over the wind?

over “YOU BITCHES”,
over women are not a struggling class
over the call and response

OUR BODIES ?
OUR CHOICE!
WHOSE STREETS
OUR BLOODY STREETS.

I press it hard to my mouth
to replace that century old lump
they hoarded in my throat
and o p e n

pour liberation
and after the rain sleep
in your body at war

all the women in us so tired
lying perfectly still gathering

gathering heartwood for new fires
to dance to burn

to build in the ashes

The wind is persistent. That is the first thing I notice about this new house. It howls off slanted
rooftops, blows off shingles, transforms this place into something I cannot recognize. Even when
I am in my kitchen, sipping tea, I feel unwelcome, and I suppose that is fitting, because I never
wanted nor planned to be here in the first place.