Cosas del Horno
In the Calle 13 song “Latinoamérica,” Residente says that whoever doesn’t love their country doesn’t love their mother. How does one write about their mother?
PSYCH402
The only book about a black or brown person and the main character is a black girl whose black friend got shot. I’m not paying $20 for this book centered around a dead black person. I’m spending $32.99 to buy some boxing gloves from Amazon so I can get ready to show these girls what’s good; so I can look my teacher into her bespeckled face with its green eyes and, right before I tell her to put her dukes up to defend herself before I actually start swinging. tell her that I cannot believe that she has the audacity to decide the one book about a person of color will be about death.
Two Dogs
Soaking wet in cotton underwear and an oversized soccer jersey, I am an animal—a 12-year-old in human years—sitting on a flooding wrap-around balcony in eastern Canada. This is where spruce and pine needles stick to the bottoms of your feet. This is where jewelweed grows in creeks.
Dusk Quercus
Later, I dream of running across the street, a transparent green grid over my slow-motion running. Like a target. The car doesn’t make a sound, but the noise of my head hitting the car is still somewhere just across the threshold of awareness. The ears are the last to submerge.
The Date Farmer
For years after my travels, I’d track stories of women traveling alone, of women murdered, of women who’d made similar choices to the ones I’d made on the road. I followed the story of a young woman who’d been around my age when she’d gone backpacking and then missing in Nepal.
maybe even the sea
This run-down, rusted-out trailer park was the first place in years that wasn't someone else’s farm with frozen pipes in the winter, far from everyone including school friends. There were other kids here.