Sometimes Oral History Comes Off Recorder as Poem or, Birth Story

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion my mother mimics her body
stick bug straight
arms plastered to side

[i was in labor for three days
in a hospital bed in Brooklyn
the lighting was harsh for your eyes]

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meat market

By Lara Atallah after Lebanon, a country with one of the worst economic crises since the nineteenth century

the price of bread has gone up again. throngs of cars
slouch towards shuttering gas stations. the currency, a farce

with each swing of the gavel, numbers
soar. fifty thousand pounds by day’s end,

what’s another ten thousand? or a hundred thousand?
a hundred and forty thousand pounds to the dollar?

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dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/dem Blessings #34

By Sharon Bridgforth Remember.

You were wild
and you were free
and you felt unloved
and unseen
and you ran the streets
and you Loved hard
and you were Loved deeply

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have you eaten yet

By Chen Chen the mystery of your lungs
the spaceship of your yes

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(Reassignment)

By Rose Zinnia a trick
of light
a sleight
of hand
a contused
grammar

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“Here in the Electric Dusk”

By Emma Trelles After winter rains
The hills
Are velvety beasts
We pretend
We have nothing
To worry about
Except for the usual
Minuet of dying
Scraping the corners

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‘70 Chevy El Camino

By Vickie Vértiz The men inside the Pep Boys wear blue work shirts. Fingerprints on the hems. That’s
how I’m going to be: my hands with grease that won’t wash off. Like Apá buying Freon.
Fenders. My sister sniffs the little trees, outlines the posing girls with her eyes. We buy
peanuts and their candy turns our palms to red

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A Conversation With Siri About Death

By Karla Cordero i watch slasher movies but hate the sight of real blood leave the body

i panic on planes & think of ways the machine or sky

will betray me i read books in fear to evaporate

out of this world without seeing its soft hands

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