God Visits Earth

She’s divinely tired arriving in the atmosphere,
jet lagged. Stepped out on the hotel patio
for a smoke,
wants the quiet of the night, wants a
break from the controversy and fan mail,
wants a vacation in the Baltic.

During her terrestrial stay
she ditches the old attire,
feels the lick of moisture, breath of sun
on delightfully bare skin,
might don a pink velvet mini skirt and halter,
and go braless, just to be fun.

She’s left the office. She’s at the liquor store
during the lunch break,
dangling her exalted hands
over the spice rums, chooses one for its cinnamon
flame, a step up from Merlot,
and picks up a cold Coke on the way out

because the place sticky-
hot, even in February,
thinks that the kids have had their fun
destroying it.

She’s leaving notes. One on the napkin
for the waitress at the diner
who brushed

her shoulder, whose perfume lingered,
whose lips are bright static
that speckle her vison.

She’s tied up with someone who
looks like Eve.

It’s possible that you’ve seen her around

By Clara Allison

disappearing

an enlarged photograph of my grandmother
slowly turns violet

hung above stove
hot oil anoints hem of homemade dress

posing in her father’s yard
all sand and concrete

a poor man’s garden—
though papa’s tomatoes were legendary.

i wanted it there—
to remember

that i belong, am tethered—
no immigrant to family

and for her blessing
when tossing basil in the sauce.

jade velvet heels with rhinestone buckles
vanish first

violet begins blanching
seams wrought from teenage hand

maybe it’s the cheap paper i used to print—
or she is done watching over me

my earthly pettiness
wanes protection

she wants to dance with grandpa again,
forever cruise the artificial waters of the Panama Canal.

sometimes i see her ghost
in the moving leaf of a fern.

By Tanya Tuzeo

Biography:

Mulberries

This love is waking slow
as January ice melts, temples touching,
skin soft as a hushed prayer
of repentance under a twisted olive tree.
It is the mulberry bush we gorged on
as children, our canyon chins dribbling
with indigo lust, the sweetness in our bellies
not yet flipping our stomachs ill.
Shame is learned, Eve whispered to me;
to anyone who has feasted so relentlessly –
it lodges under fingernails like dirt, a shitty
alchemist transforming gold to lead. But
this love is a finger licked clean as bone,
pressed to knotted lips, sealed like an envelope.
It is a seed transported by a starling,
scattered in a cornfield, waiting to grow
under a shut-eye moon where light shudders
to go. This love is a woman who stumbles
with the elegance of a poem, such that my feet,
trained to tiptoe through houses of worship,
would follow her foxtrot to the gallows.
It is the window we boarded with every raised
stake, it is the greasy film of stagnation atop
an unmoving lake, it is two humans
mouth-to-mouth as this love suffocates.

By Jaimie Lee

Biography:

Jaimie Lee is a writer and psychology student from Sydney, Australia. If she could, she would spend all her time writing in sunlit kitchens surrounded by black cats.

Pronunciation Guide for My Mother

How do you say
“Hers is a name I can’t pronounce”
in Japanese?

Is there a word for that in German?
Something akin to bedauern (regret)
or the Irish word for daughter (inion)?

Did you know I would be the one
with the light eyes, the Barry nose, the double eye-lids?
That I would pass as hakujin
even though I’m hafu?

Your nickname for me—
the one that means seaweed
instead of child of the law—
is like Lori but with an N.

My full name is staccato song
in my father’s mouth,
a drumbeat rhythm
singing the story of who I am

my face fails to tell
reflecting who I am
in ways you were never
able to say.

By Noriko Nakada

Biography:

Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the stories she has been told not to talk about. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in The Rising Phoenix Review, Hippocampus, Catapult, Linden Ave, and elsewhere.

The White Buffalo

My brother                  and I,

while

                  in our bunks beds,

would

              peer out             our

window

                  to             the west.

at night             he would appear.

Him,

                  who the Indios

worshipped,

                   we knew we were

lucky.

                       we knew we were                   

safe.

with all                   the horrors

and

               dangers        of the dark

He lived

                              motionless,

between the trees

                                 and bushes,

The moonlight on his

                                           back,

His         pearl coat      

                                    shining,

The                          white buffalo

protected                          

us           until       sunrise

By A.J. Ortega

To the boy I first loved (an ode to my lover)

when I see two souls attached to each other
and love that gives all of itself

when I see trust in a stranger’s eyes
and sincerity among friends

when I hear stories of passion
and people talk about loved ones

as I sit and listen to their tales
mistakes and adventures

lessons and losses
regrets and experiences

my heart wanders home
to the boy I first loved.

when I see broken people
and those who love have scarred

when they talk about how damaged
loving the wrong one made them

and I hear terrible things done in the name of love
how shallow and temporary people can be

when I see them throw away loyalty
and others mock commitment

when I read letters of people who wish for soul mates
and those who have never known true love

my heart wanders home
to the boy I first loved

and reminds me how badly I should treasure
what he and I still share.

some get it right after a few tries
and others never do

but the boy I first loved and I
we are each other’s first love

and that is a million times
the hardest thing to find.

By JB Favour

On the train home

The fluorescent lights
will drown everything and every
body on this trip.

No, not like that.
This isn’t a ship.

Yes we sway, but we are not reefs
at the bottom of the West Indies sea.

That passage already known,
A theft from which we grow.

On the other side,
there is a woman, tired, a man running
late, and someone
alive in a dream.

Its 5:32 and we’re
not yet home. But this
time we have a way back.

A body and map. Lines
to live by. To get
by. Do you remember
what was before the sea?

It’s ten to six. The sea
is a carriage, and this is
a carousel. A four train to Crown

By Desiree Nestor

Biography:

Desiree Nestor currently lives in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, and currently works as a literacy/writing tutor with middle school and high school students. She loves soccer, listening to music, and learning French.

When I say I want to go home

I want to go home like
picking berries off the bush
and hearing the ocean in my mouth
hearing the planting of gardens
in the crease of my hands
hearing the shade of the tree
on my sundrunk skin

I want to go home like
running in fields with no shoes
like drinking coconut from the gourd
and eating mango off the tree
And the fiyah
oh da fiyah burns a path
through the mystery in our chests

I want to go home like no locks
on doors, no door bells,
maybe no doors at all We sing
as we approach any home
to prepare them for our arrival
and are welcomed with drink and food and games
where there are no borders in our spirit
just the flow of life in our names

Home, where no one SAYS i love you,
because it is never a question
to be answered
And our chests are mountains and rivers
instead of hollowed out caves

Home, where life is where the family is
where there are no separate buildings that fragment the being
into proper and professional
where we are eternally
as we are in any moment whether planting or hunting
or loafin in the field or the river

Home, where our hair
and the leaves
and the grass
and the antennae are one
where the feet root deep into the soil
to drink from the water below

where the hands hold ALL
where the senses are awake within

Home, where the mighty laugh
of the newborn graces the ear of the elder
as she leaves her encasing behind
to rejoin the river and tree of life
that courses through our veins and the wind races
sharing
in their joy and release

Leaves pumping through
the wild hair of children
as they chase their brethren
lions and lambs
Goat and gallo
butterfly and moth
The wind the river
the sand the sea

Everything runs and swims
as if it is flying

in our veins in our step

Even the blood
in our veins
Even the pep
In our step
Even the grins
above our chins

All free flowing

All flowing

All free

All all
that they
can be

you know
home.

By Melissa Ferrer (&)

hole the size of candlestick

driving 101 north razed field dirt gusts in my eyes
i still expect stadium to loom along bayshore lived off
next exit paul ave no one else came to visit this side
of san francisco gray candlestick welcomed the faithful

mr gabutero exchanged niners & giants scores for extra credit
brothers & i learned to be american from tv watching strikes
& first downs our new religion on sundays camouflaged in red
& gold orange & black like the other kids at epiphany

i danced barefoot on the field niner playoff game
mixing cultures san fran blend wafting honey
smoke bbq tailgate parking lot boombox blaring
whoot there it is under our bamboo pole fans limboed

giants first to leave haunted by world series rumbling
ground cracked stadium static pebbles pelting
tv screen i was next moved to east bay my brother
mark held on registered to vote a new sf niners home

last concert after paul mccartney fireworks
electrified the stick before demolition colors rose
& fell to glitter mirrored on the bay sizzling fogless
night i called my brothers to ask if they saw fireworks too

By Karina Fantillo