The Fall of 2024

Today I tried to write again, but my mind is empty and 
So are my hands; I have spent them all away, on 
Blouses just to prove that I lost a couple of pounds,
And bits of some things to show myself that I have more
Than a couple of pounds—my mind is far, far away, and
Yet—but—so—and—half of me has been here to bear
Witness, to bare what is left of me before it all chips 
Away, a way to remember the words I have used only to
Pour the ink all over the curves and blur it all back 
Together, but at least this is what remains, and what is 
Left of me, the last bit of common sense that I will 
Never use, from the beginning to the present end. 

I am still young, I tell myself, and there is still so much 
Time left in the world, all of it, time enough for only
you and I, in the lateness of the morning and the early
Beginnings at the end of the year, but every candidate For my affections brings this old feeling that only you
Bore, by land or by sea, whatever it is, there is still 
Distance by heart or by proximity, so I keep ringing up 
The couriers and reminding them of my free shipping, 
I keep calling you up so you know that I am living, who
Cares to live if it is not for your love? Spill that apathy 
From my lips to your faithless country, spit that venom
From your faith to my fate, let it go every time we touch. 

Today I remind myself that I am a writer so I must write 
But I have given all my words away to the garden of 
False fairies and godless gnomes, I claim it’s charity but
I truly only need a facade of generosity for my vanity, 
I let myself believe that I have kindness in my heart, so
I may put myself to sleep in the belief of my purity, 
You have robbed me of my sentences to string you 
Along, now there are no more words to fill up a meaning
And there are no more syllables to make up your song, 
You have judged to sentence me to a silent misery, 
If there is some regret in you, may it chain you to every 
Inch of the servitude that I once volunteered for you. 

I carry with me my words and our noises, I recite it with
A couple thousands steps along the way to put me in 
God’s way and to my own ease—if physicality is your
Intimacy then you must be as pure as the Madonna, if 
Words are my intimacy then I should be as filthy as any
Other smut on a whore, but who are you to fall to your 
Feet and declare yourself my friend? And who is he to 
Turn on his feet and become a heartless foe? Call it 
What you want—whatever lies you may tell yourself 
And wherever your heart belongs, whoever you are 
Holding me now in your hand, I know a thousand 
Poems cannot save me anymore, more than ever before. 

by Leya Kuan

You are Just a Friend

Every lie you tell me belongs in Heaven 
and every shred of truth can go right down to the depths of Hell—pour it out of half my soul and fill up your cup
Just because you are just, just because we only are just, 
You make me nineteen in the same way you are, you 
Bring me back to the childhood I lost when I was fifteen, 
Stop the time and stop that man! Stop it all at the line, 
Can’t we just be alone with no other entity to prey upon 
Us? Can’t we be left alone on our own without a prayer?

Maybe I will never be her, I cannot love you because 
Someone else got to get to you first, but there is this
One beating in my heart that I cannot put to a feeling, 
But how nice that she got to hold you in her arms and 
Declare that skin hers to feel to a fault, I get to hold you
Too but without a word to hold me accountable, even if
I am content with this worthless warmth, Winehouse has
To warn me some waiting urgency, that my heart will 
Break for you every time, just because I am/was not her.

And as much as I dream and delude myself into 
Believing I am some film star with a camera trailing my
My lines and my moves, you will remember that certain
Part of me that no one else will bother with, no one no 
More, the more I feel, the more I would like to forget, 
I write this in my underwear, I do not let you look
Under where my truth leads to, there is nothing more 
Than what meets the naked eye, I am so predictable that
Everybody already knows, everybody talks as if they do. 

Whatever you want to call me, love, or Leya, 
Let me fall in love alone and mend the heart you did not get to break, it is not your fault that my days are filled with you, even worse when my days have no hint of you, 
Have you the courage equal to my desire? I clap with
One hand tied behind my back, fingers crossed, in 
Anticipation or to relieve me of any red herring you laid
Out for me to trip all over, I could swear that there was 
Someone for me to love, another Troy for me to destroy. 

by Leya Kuan

My Faith in Fate

You used to be someone—
Never mind who, never mind when,
But you used to
Cry at heartbreaking moments of a talkie,
Sob at the words at the end of a knife,
Do your tears dry up when you’re sixty?
Or is it all gone,
That surface-level sorrow, that lonesome feeling,
At the sight of your first wrinkle in the mirror?

You wished to be someone—
Never mind those dreams, never mind them at all,
Because they are figments of your imagination,
And they linger, still, in the corners of your mind,
Vanishing behind the shadows of your children,
And on the heels of your husband’s leather shoes,
A singer, no, you couldn’t get to the highest notes,
A surgeon, no, you hate ketchup and blood,
Resigned to being somebody’s wife, someone’s mother.

You talked about yourself—
Never mind your name, never mind your voice,
They see your face, pat your husband on the back,
They talk to you through your husband,
You don’t know words, you are deaf and mute,
You are spoken for, and speak only when spoken to,
A child, you are ushered towards the other wives,
Have fun, play with toys till it’s time to go,
You hate them all, the talking heads and drunkards.

You don’t know what to do–
Never mind yourself, never mind yourself at all,
They don’t know your name, they don’t remember,
You are Mrs So-and-So, So-and-So’s mother!
Your mother-in-law is a mother only to to your husband,
Only till you belong to the Earth once more,
To be resigned to fate once is divine punishment,
To meet a coincidence of fate again divine death,
And yet the dirt in between your toes disappears.

by Leya Kuan

I will not swallow the mothballs you try to feed me

I am at my softest physically and mentally
and that makes some people uncomfortable
(with themselves).

Statues of aphrodite reveal that the goddess of beauty and love
had some meat on her bones, as do I,
but I know I am not the West’s ideal type.

Maybe that’s why I’m not allowed to take up more space.
Maybe that's why I’m given less room to wiggle in.

My ass and tits have grown a bit
when it happened; I didn't realize that it was sacrilege.

I wonder what Taino deity represents beauty. I wonder what she looks like.
Is her hair long? Does she view herself as a her? Does she think she is beautiful? Or does that assessment come from others? Does she even care for beauty? Or is it just a known part of her?

I’ve gone through a metamorphosis and came out the other end thicker.

Who says the caterpillar must become a butterfly?
Maybe I’m a moth.

I like my softness, it makes me sturdier, and don’t we all need some padding
from the beatings of this world
from the beating of our own hearts
from the beating of the drums that tells you to get back up.

The butterfly is drawn to the flower.

I am drawn to the light
in the darkness.

by Kamilah Mercedes Valentín Díaz

The Fireflies Sing Tonight

Murmurs hum in the thick August air like the
beating of a bumblebee's heart, the invisible
orchestra's cadence drawing the final curtain upon
the fox's tail cradling an orange sun.

Mother runs through the auburn fields, coal-colored
braids trailing in the wind. Her weathered hands carry a
tin pot, where she drops moonstones, bluebonnets and
lovebugs in a concoction of sap — "Honeypot tricks," she calls them.

As the sky becomes swatched with indigo hues and
black clouds, I take a wooden spoon and clang it against
Mother's honeypot. The fireflies come to feast upon her offerings
and, in return, show me the path to the city.

Twinkling lights dot the skyline as jazz beyond the bayou
shakes the earth beneath the soles of my feet. Coca-Cola lines
stretch around the curb as ladies in black sequins and
smoky pearls enter golden doors under neon lights. Boys
and girls in summer shorts & pinstripe tees chase the sparks
of orange fireworks.

I follow them but they are lost in cobblestone storefronts. Busboy
caps line the streetlamps as newspaper rags form coats of steel along the
brick walls of alleyways. A man with broken teeth who looks like me
asks, "Got a quarter for me, Missy?" but the fireflies ignore him and fly on.

I sequester myself in a silent theater as a piano crescendo
collides with the rainstorm brewing outside. The movie
begins to play, and I begin to cry for Mother.

by Katherine Zhao

My body in your mouth

Baby fat:

To my mother you say:

she cute eeh,
watch har likkle chubby cheeks
and chunky thighs
I could just love har up.

I coo and smile, not understanding.

Pickney tings:

To my mother you say:

yuh never breastfeed har enough,
look how she look malnourished,
mawga bad bad; look how she tough?

I look down at skinny legs,
skinny, strong legs,
skinny, strong, brown legs
that let me run from boys who want to touch what’s not theirs
that lift me up into trees that girls
shouldn’t climb
that make me keep in step with
my granddad’s long strides.

I was confused.

Force ripe:

To my mother you say:
pickney nuh fi get breast so soon
smaddy must a feel dem up;
go get har checked out –
mark my words.

I look down at the bumps
raised higher than welts
nipples protruding beyond the swells
my tears rolled off them
like waterfalls over mountains.
I do not understand my body’s changing
I do not want this change
I squeeze them like pimples
they do not burst
but keep growing like
ripened fruits upon my chest.

I do not understand this change in my body.

Grown:

To me you say:
When di baby due? Di belly look round eeh.
A hope a nuh girl pickney yuh going have –
dem gi too much trouble fi raise.

I look down at my belly
empty of womb –
the site of life
and death.
I look at its softness
the rolls that shake
when I belly laugh
the joy that bubbles up and can’t be contained
the rolls that shake when I dance
when no one’s looking
the rolls that lovers hang on
to for dear life
when riding that high wave.
I smile,
I understand.
my body
that holds me up
it brings me joy
and pain in equal measure
it is a source of beauty
and shame
But it deserves to be loved
every inch of it
deserves all the sweet
and empowering things to be whispered over it
etched on it like a mural.


I reach over to you
I part your lips,
gently at first
(you are surprised)
I put my fingers in
then my hand
I grip firmly on to your tongue
and rip my beautiful body from
your mouth

I understand:
my body has no home there –
there with its putrid lies.

I leave you tongue-less and bloody
grabbing at your throat
missing the way
my body used to sit in your mouth.

by Karolyn K Smith

The Clit and the Ears

My clit doesn't function
and never will,
for it’s not down there it grows
but in my ears,
my alter vaginas, the real ones
who know better to take thousands of lovers.
Nothing needs coming in,
not even an earbud
brushes.
Good chords suffice
with the right beat.
Out, out, bloody mucus, bloody men.
Better fuck my Music
than fuck myself up yet again.

---

This poem has also been published in Tentacle Poetry Vol. 2, a quarterly poetry zine published by Peel Street Poetry, Hong Kong, in October 2021.

by Garfield Chow

She is gone now

The sight

of flour on skin,

age spots

form an archipelago

across your arms.

a clutter
of dusty
pictures and
rosaries
under your bed.

Life, you’d sometimes think, hadn’t been that good to me.

Girdles that
squeezed
your fibroid
infested womb—
An old hallowed out

home to five
Barricaded
Against
Life.


You comb

your unruly

hair back;
look uncomfortable.
The look is not you.
I love it when you just
Let it be—

rather than tame it
And look like a scared
Old lady
Instead of the courageous
Heroine that you are.



You still store things
Away
In overflowing drawers
And cupboards
Afraid that one day
You will need

Something

& it will not be there:

What trauma
Gave birth to that?



You say,
I feel your mother
Is doing something

To me—

Like I can’t put my
Fingers on it –
Your hands, exasperated go up in the air

Only to slowly come down

And rest, at your side

Powerless.

We loved each other once.

The nights
I fell asleep
under the
symphony
of your snores:
Uncountable.
Sleeping,
side by side
A woman, and her grandchild.




You say,
Pointing to
A brand new

Press, you say,

Look at that

What my
daughter

Buy for me—

You know what she say?
She say,

when you die

I’m taking it back.

What kind of thing

Is that to say? And you

Schweups at the

callousness of your


Child.



You’ve got:

Two kitchens,

a Toilet

without a door,

social security

checks

deposited

In

Brooklyn.


We walk
down the street
and you smile at
a stranger,
and giggle like
a child...
But wait nah,
you say, stopping,
in a daze. I
thought that was
Nen-nen, but
nen-nen
die long
time now...

What is happening to me, you ask?

& no matter how
hard I try,

I can not answer:

Alzheimers.

by Lesley-Ann Brown

being a girl is a wasteland

I like being a girl

But sometimes at night

I try to remember what it was like

To breathe without weight on my chest

The weight of imposed motherhood

Imposed like a visitor to a house

The kind of visitor you don’t want to come in

But if they force themself in

It’s your fault

Because your house is a provocative colour

So you were practically asking for it

So there’s blood running down your legs

Could be nature or nurture

Nature of my body that has pain built in

Nurture of boys

Boys who will be boys

But not all of them

But nearly all of us

Or nurture of beliefs

That what’s between my legs

Says anything about my purity

Fuck purity

Stop associating femininity with purity

Why do we act as if femininity is this soft delicate thing?

When we all know it’s not

It’s a war you didn’t enlist to

A bad dream you don’t wake up from

It’s a wasteland where flowers aren’t allowed to grow

It’s obligation to hypothetical men and hypothetical babies

It’s playing a rigged game

Where your chromosomes rolled a double

So you lost before you even got to play your hand

It’s your body being deemed public property

By people who don’t know you

And being given dead flowers

By a boy who forgot you had hay fever

So you’re crying and you’re sobbing

And you’re screaming and you’re shouting

And you’ve lost your voice

When you didn’t have one to begin with

And all you have left is flowers and no say

When all you wanted was a wasteland and stinging nettles

So you could breathe easy

by Denise

Gritos de la Vigilante

They say, ‘All Lives Matter,’ as they turn their backs on

Indigenous women who are being pulled into the shadows.

They say the overturning is about the sacredness of life, but say nothing

when Black bodies are being impaled by bullets.

‘Life starts at conception,' they lecture as

screaming mothers are being held back by the police.

They watch as children are blasted in the head by deranged AR-15s.

When the massacres are over, senators and governors

drop to their knees and kiss the barrel of the hot, blood-stained metal.

I speak out against it, claiming my autonomy.

They long to kill me.

To bind my hands behind my back while I slip on the kindling they’ve gathered.

They are skilled at ending women like this.

Their laws demand us to smoke upon the stake.

They don’t know there is already fire inside of me.

My heart burns with eternal sacred light—a testimony to the spirit that won’t die.

My ancestors scream ‘fight’ into my ears.

I must rain down on them the rage and heat of my people.

Vengeance for all the people they’ve destroyed.

I will never submit my body to their prodding.

Never will they decide the fate of my brown skin.

They say it’s ‘We the People,’ but they've never seen me as a person.

And I scream at the top of my lungs for all who are being crushed under this regime.

Swiftly— I strike with the sharpness of my pen

to combat this darkness closing in on us.

by Christiane Williams-Vigil

Letter to My Body

As I press my pen to the page—

Do I state my truth in shrewd elegance

or does one

Simply scribble their deranged

Thoughts until the blank paper

Transforms into an otherworldly colour?

Otherworldly.

Such a word graces the page boldly.

As I peer into the mirror,

It is what I see

when I place judgment

upon my shape.

I find it peculiar.

Unlike anything on earth.

Undesirable.

I’m not plump in the right places.

Not the body one would see

On the cover of a magazine.

Not the girl everyone longs to be.

Unless she is between worlds

Of slim and thick.

I’ve prayed by the bedside.

Hoping someday,

I would not be overlooked

But perhaps treasured in a gallery.

The ideal piece of art

Gawked at thoughtlessly

To be admired by all.

Studied for centuries

As the highest regard of beauty.

If this mirror were a book

It would tell you in sheer honesty—

I am mismatched.

They forgotten to create

A category for me.

If I smash the glass in a fit of rage

Does my blood reject my point of view

To spell the word beautiful?

Because what would moving

my body into a box do for me

If it only suffocated to exist as I am?

by Rachel Barduhn

a woman (first) & a writer (last)

he puts pretty stones in my pockets

the ones to make me smile

they pull me to the earth

i am low

i am heavy

i can no longer be beautiful

when i want to be listened to

i can no longer have pretty lips

when i want to make them move

by Sariah Lake

Nina Simone Was a Force of Nature

Maybe that’s why everything she did

canceled out


the divine feminine

her call remained on silent

fans handed her

nature to pay her after shows

as if it showered her

in love, summer rain some-


thing she never experienced at home growing up, the mark of a true artist is they never intended

to be famous and then they get labeled crazy for loving

what they do, some do end

up, but she will never

not be crazy

talented in my charcoal eyes

bouquets and

cricket

claps

that sprinkled


incremented nourishment. Yes, seeds & overcrowding weeds her hands slaved in soil, black

on the surface and even further

down


the road her parents paved


for a family tree of burned bark, brown

wading through the saffron

dandelion fields, eating


sour fruits

of their labor, sickening

howls for money to hold


a love she never was around

growing

up to keep her

apartment from crumbling,

this is the ugly part offstage

where an audience partitions

artist from Art is the starving,

the daily news


feed, sees a person as purely an image

Venus fly trap she was predestined to

nurture the feminine thirst, undeniable

will to feed to quench, indeed,

she had the mother


load, pockets full of

blaring blackness glaring back at her

tar-coated trust almost so dark

becomes invisible paper


bag over face, cover like Claudia

Rankine’s black hoodie

figure against a stark

white background, back again

mistaken for a creature


no choice, Mississippi

Goddam, kick cans in


a crumbling city until it’s

rebuilt with revolution, footfalls

eery echoes the immaterial

that sustains

trashed pothole


streets, riddled with plastic

people, washed-out, watch out


she will point trigger fingers if you stand

in the way of her


first love, Bach

weathered concrete, vermon was the man

-made ever two-way in giving, supporting

the soles? She asked no


one in particular.

No cents at her feet, not even a dirty penny. We could waste time


by listing the basic living swept cunningly from her soles, those rich roots

command

to be secure, an Earth Song 2.0

instead of their strength ravaged

all she wanted was love from the ground

up.

by Maria

Monkey Parts

I enter the room

Ten toes on sterile floors

The doctor is ready to examine me

I wrap my indecent parts in tissue

Hop on board the sailor’s ship

ready to go with the wind

He takes a part of my leg

From the knee to the ankle

“It’s got to go” he says

What “It’s all rotten.”

They’ve been experimenting with monkey parts

“I’ve got one just right for you”

What “skin tone… and all”

I don't want to be different, or more so in this society

He’s hunched over watching me twitch in fascination

I won’t feel the pain of his grip on my leg soon.

It will fade

I hold the catalogue above my head

“They are sacrificed for you”

He’s talking about the monkey parts again

“Pick one with a pretty name”

The man, the doctor, the one with the masked face

is out of my sight now

Standing behind my head

I’ve heard from my sisters the process is painless

I’ve listened to them howl in their sleep at night

It’s time for me to go now, and

when I awaken, I’ll have my monkey parts

And he will have profited

by Fowsia

Fearfully and Wonderfully... Dysphoric

I look in the mirror


And see the buzzcut of a lost daughter

Stubble gripping her chin


That sinful fruit wedged in her throat

Choking her


She gasps


Each uttered syllable cracking and aching

Escaping her lips

Shoulders broadening with repugnance

Tear-soaked calloused hands


Gripping a chest that never grew

Skin hardening


Atop the development of bones


A structure that can never be undone

Becoming an abomination before her eyes

Stiffening of her genitals


She desperately hides them away


Dark and thick hair grows down her once

smooth legs


Encasing them in shame

A body matures and morphs before her

Swelling of confusion and bitterness within

her

I gaze in the mirror


I’m empowered as


I see the most recent incarnation of a story

with no ending

He begins to slip away

Each day she becomes

More visible


More real

More tangible

I’m empowered by her will

Not to live


But to thrive

She is alive

by Rae Lee

Blue Beyond

we cry for our mothers

as we one day learn

that being confined is luxury

that there is beauty in training bras and peel off polish

in sidewalk chalk and dollhouses

in visiting womanhood as one visits the beach

something to dip your toes in

to swim in,

let cool the rushing heat of your preteen hunger

of your thirst to be grown and taken serious

to sip of, and decide that blue is pretty enough to stomach the salt

but there was always something to reach for

your age, your youth

a dock behind you

when your small light limbs grew tired of fighting current and making desperate waves

there was always land

until one day you reach back

and you find splinters

and blue

and blue

and blue

by Sariah Lake