fall 2021
Table of Contents
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She's a Pretty Bird
Susan Zimmerman
latchkey fragments
Frances Boyle
Between Then and Then
Millicent Borges Accardi
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage
Granada, Take Three
Elena Johnson
Swans at the Golf Club
Ruth Daniell
When I See Lake Water
Kristin LaFollette
Say It Delicious
Berry-Picking
Laura Cesarco Eglin
A wrist, a wren, a small knife
Ellen Stone
No One Knows How to Be Good
Emily Kedar
On the Straightaway to the Rockies
Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator
A Nova Scotian Night Light
Ryan Smith
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth
Charlotte Vermue Peters
Boy With Orange
Phillip Watts Brown
Late August at the End of the World
Bren Simmers
Making the Most of Our Voices
Ken Victor
i decay, bro
erica hiroko isomura
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
i decay, bro
i keep thinking of @EmilyYoon saying that she
keeps thinking of “idk” as “i decay”
—陳琛, @chenchenwrites on Twitter
i decay each time i swipe up & scroll
in the void idk if hashtags revive justice
the revolution will not be televised, they say
but will it livestream on the internet? idk
whenever someone calls the cops i decay
because idk who will be choked next, u kno?
i decay knowing corporal punishment is alive
& well, the death penalty still exists
܆
idk if daniel dae kim or wu thought of this when they offered a reward
of $25K à la crimestoppers for info concerning a young Black suspect
like bro, u realize it’s p much legal to commit murder
against Black and Brown bodies, right?
i, too, decay whenever an elder takes a blow
in oakland or new york or my hometown
across the azn diaspora we’re thinking
that coulda been my grandma, my auntie, my mom, i know
we just want to protecc our own, so
idk if i can blame daniel dae kim, wu, u or me
as much as i can blame a collective amnesia
we’re not all the same asian, obvi
yet we all decay at the same fingertips
of a supremacy that is teaching us
to stifle such minor feelings
like these and those and theirs &
bro, it’s not
just us
܆
& a poem isn’t a synonym
for justice, i know
neither is a hashtag tho
both compose protest
these days a poem is
all i can hold in
my Yellow palms
clenched into fists
tightlylikeso invoking
words in white spaces
persisting on a page
as i decay—