Summer Figs
By Ina Cariñowhen I turn seventy & you are gone,
will my muscles still heft with ease
a crate of summer figs---one
bruised fig for every year of my life---
from the tree in your backyard?
Search Results
Of Beauty
By Tala KhanmalekOn a table in the corner of Lollipop Shoppe, I face the crowd and dance. I look toward a circle of new friends by the bar. Most of us just met six days ago yet we share, I think, the sole familiar between strangers: brutality. I listen with my hands. Arms overhead, conjuring.
The Days On Which Trans Women (I) win
By Zuggie TateWhen the sun greets well-slept eyelids
when the nail doesn’t break
when the voice doesn’t crack,
when the bus grandmother says hello sweetness
when she pulls a honeycomb smile from this hive of a mouth
when the door is held
when her favorite flowers bloom
Water Birth
By JoAnn BalingitThere’s no usurping her pain
now the baby’s head is crowning
mom mom mom mom mom
no panting I say
take deep breaths through your nose
Immigration
By YanyiThe teacup with the broken
handle: no longer missing.
Arriving in my mother’s hand
as she sets it down for service.
Then the dish in the air touches
down at its place on red carpet
and the Fisher Price karaoke mic
rights and repairs itself.
Cutting my dad’s fingernails
By Adrian Gaston GarciaHe says that he’s too embarrassed to ask me for this favor
But in his Spanish it sounds sweeter, more innocent, almost childlike
He sets up his station at the dining room table:
A paper towel and two different set of nail clippers
He folds the paper towel in half
before placing his withered and wrinkled hands on top
He lets me hold them
I cannot remember the last time we held hands
Not Equal to Family (Reduced Down to Me)
By Ryan Jafar ArtesIf
Mother + Father = Me
But
Mother + Father + Me ≠ Family
Then
Mother + Father - Me = Family
There Is Only One World, This One
By S. J. GhausNearby a spring lamb wobbles
like a song on its first feet, while
somewhere in the same field a lamb dies
in its mother’s womb. This season is all
one choir, the geese on the roof, the ticks
in the grass, the shadowy black
of sunflower seeds oversleeping
in my pocket.
PARADISE
By Gbenga AdesinaNorth of the country, a road led to the desert.
Dust was the first sentence. The Sahara
was a white darkness in the distance,
and beyond it the glint of a Great Lake.
We drove past fields of ginger and wild purple onions.
There was a public garden and a ring of white egrets
around still water.
How to make salabat
By Kay Ulanday BarrettHoy! Listen, This is how to cut ginger, it’s a root, she said from
Chicago basement on first snow of the year. It’s the 90’s. Snow is
a big deal. Tear salt missing ocean salt, she cleared her throat.
Based on where we’re from, nothing can prepare us for frozen.
Fast forward: college friend asks How do you make that tea again?
The one you used to drink when it started to snow.