Spratly and Paracel
By Esther LinAfter learning his appointment was canceled
and his senior bus won’t come for another two
hours my father calls from his waiting room
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my mother watches her mother’s funeral footage again
By Wo ChanShe closed the doors
and then the blinds
and then her face, midday.
Deported
By Ellen KombiyilWe are on the plane now
crossing ocean. The pressurized
air is sweet not stale never
stale, the cabin set for
Shooting for the Sky
By Purvi ShahUnder sky massaged by sun, from a comfortable chair, I watch
the rain stroke a myrtle tree. Naked
rain, my father says. Naked,
YOU ARE WHO I LOVE
By Aracelis GirmayYou, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart
You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees
You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats
House of the Rising
By Samantha ThornhillGive thanks to your mansion
of a mama in that cold square room
the push and pull
of breath that brought
excerpt from “the black maria”
By Aracelis GirmayAracelis Girmay performs an excerpt from the book "The Black Maria" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Grease & Salt
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
Attribution
By Jee Leong KohMy grandfather said life was better under the British.
He was a man who begrudged his words but he did say this.
I was born after the British left
an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.
the best time
By Mahogany L. Brownethe best time i had as a teenager
included a bottle of cisco and a sideshow
at the uptown gas station.
after Kenny’s body was bludgeoned by his girlfriend & her two brothers