They were to write about their career aspirations. Scrawly English words rioted across a sheet of A4 paper. The paper belonged to Adnan*, a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, a student in my English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class. The class was part of a US State Department-funded education program to thwart budding radicalism in East […]
The 12-Year Old Decision that Now Haunts Me Read More »
Neelakurinji The blue mountains are purple again as though estranged lovers have washed up ashore and poured paint stolen from the Gods over the Nilgiri. Did you hear the news rumored in mists? The Neelakurunji, Strobilanthes kunthiana, fireflies of blue hue, bloomed at last. Twelve years have gone by since the purple blue comets last
Collateral Damage i. then, as in the past, there were photographs of boys who died in Viet Nam / a girl torched with napalm nothing happy after that, nothing childhood ii. i quit the laundry / quit the boys who called me scoshi / quit gook or slit / quit geisha madame butterfly must die
“Collateral Damage” and “Bamboo” Read More »
Agatha tended the Vortex. It was her punishment for not obeying the Prefect of the Labyrinth, from where all life was sustained. There were rules to follow, laws older than time, although there was no time as we know it, and she had disobeyed the rules by being herself. The Prefect had shorn her locks,
Keeper of the Vortex Read More »
When the nurse came into the room, I had just awakened from a dream. She was a young woman with swift and accurate movements; her white and blue clothes blurred as she opened the curtains to an overcast day. “You haven’t moved since the last time I checked on you,” she said. “Still tucked in,
When We Were Cowboys Read More »
God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change for I cannot change
the kinks and coils of my hair,
the skin that criminalizes me,
the body reduced to what it can do and who for;
As my age gains on me, my mother stops short
of hers, buying toys yearly for my grown daughter —
“Daddy always loved the lake,” remarked Jelisa Lu. “He’d swim in the buff every morning at dawn. I’d hear him bellow, ONE-TWO-SIX!!! Then a big fat splash.”
He thought she was the Queen of Swords. She didn’t see herself like that, more like the Queen of Cups perhaps.
“Queen of Swords”, “Claws”, “In Her Voice”, “Hunger”, and “Sometimes a Bird Outside” Read More »
Sshhhck.
She has no idea where she is. Surrounded by blackness, like floating in a void.
