ESSAY
You learned to say “I need a job” in English at the JFK airport to anybody who would listen. That’s when they put a mop in your hands. So you started mopping, and then you stopped smoking, stopped drinking, or at least that’s what you told me you did. Maybe it was when you had Elizabeth, and before you had us, that you stopped having fun.
POETRY
No one wants to / be reminded of / the brutal beauty / of becoming.
TRANSLATION
Translated from Spanish by Jacqui Cornetta
MICRO
Be glad you're ugly. Ugly girls lead simpler lives.
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I wanted to pay homage to Asian American women in my life and writers, which is why there is Mitski.
“His fate was predetermined, you see. The stars had already decided.”
ME: Not the next Georgia O'Keeffe but very good at photographing flowers.
He tugs at his sleeves. Maybe he has a sister—as I have a brother—whose brain, like the zebrafish’s brain, craves that bitter swallow, that floating high.
I thanked the scissors, / cut the thread I had woven between continents, / families, the uneven fingers of life / and slept with it under my pillow.
