Jul, 16 2019 | no responses
We spotted our dessert next to the register: el pan covered in cracked pink icing and shaped like la concha; flat pan made of concentric circles and bent to look like una oreja; oven-dark pan shaped like a pig, los marranitos, the favorites of mi mamá.
Jul, 16 2019 | no responses
What I call my good intentions get the best of me. / During week two of the semester I have students // place an asterisk each time shame shows up / in the excerpt of a memoir whose author’s take // on affirmative action & bilingualism I take for / internalized whitewashing.
As the Stars Burrow against My Ribs
Jul, 16 2019 | no responses
I elegy. This bright morning unsayable / as the sentence of the woman who died / in daylight as her children climbed her still / body in a hospital bed.
Jul, 16 2019 | no responses
My mother came to me last night. // Holding my youngest brother, / the ends of her body had disappeared.
Jul, 16 2019 | no responses
Not even a year later, he and Kelvin had moved to San Francisco because he understood by then that he was not cut out to be part of a happy family either. Each month, Kelvin’s parents drove into the city to stay with them, and Phil wondered whether they knew that they were the reason for the move.
Apr, 27 2018 | no responses
After my daughter’s birth in 2002, there were nights I sat in the rocking chair next to her crib, understanding that the world would be better if I killed myself. And her. I’d grip the arms of the chair and flex every muscle in my body to stop myself. One night, I walked into the room where her father was reading and sat on the edge of the bed beside him. I admitted I had no feelings—for him, for her, for myself—but that we could be friends; we could raise her together. We’d be fine. Our lives would be fine.