I used to think I could do anything
with enough effort—throw a rope
at the night and lasso in the moon,
or jump from a tree
and beat my arms into wings
like an owl, its feathers nothing
more than decoration, nothing my naked
arms couldn’t match. I was an imaginative
child. An imbecile in some circles.
It is not nice to call someone names.
I was the name-caller. I said Little White
Sickle to the moon. I said Big Head Bird
to the owl. I said Mom, and I said Dad.
I thought if I shouted these names loud
enough, then someone would respond.
These days I have seen my best
efforts fail. All the love I’ve poured
into a person. Or them into me.
How I’ve failed to open myself
properly to receive their names.
Love. Love bird. I have been called
so many names. I have so many
identities I never meant to adopt.
In the dark, the owls hoot at each other
and I shout back: me, me, me.

Kien Lam

Bags of ice drip from the back of a small bike
in Vietnam. The exhaust pipe rumbles. The man
sweats. My tongue melts. We are lucky we are not tiny
starving polar bears slipping off the last refuge
of ice into the black asphalt. The open
ocean. Or I should say we are lucky
the coming flood is incremental.
We are lucky to share this moment—
him delivering the bags of ice
before they melt, and me having returned
to my parents’ birthplace, which is to me
an almost-home in that I am almost
melting. An old woman sells a child
a snack. Her mother hands her some cash.
The old woman doesn’t melt. The bike
doesn’t melt. We are lucky to be held
together by bodies which are so difficult
to melt. We are similar in our almost-melting,
just as the sounds of the café I am sitting in
almost melt into me the way a song’s name sits
on the tip of your tongue when you can’t
remember it. I will never fully know
the sounds because I am lucky to have left
the melting: my mother lucky
to have a family that didn’t need to sell
dried pieces of squid on the street,
which is a thing I almost-understand—
the old woman squatting in the street.
In Vietnam I am the piece of ice
that stays on the bike. I am the child
chewing on the dried squid. I am lucky
it is dead and cannot escape into the wet
air, where the Vietnamese people swim
and their voices distort just slightly—I can
almost understand them. I can almost
piece my tongue back together.
I can almost stop the melting.

Kien Lam

I unloaded my stomach
onto the pavement again,

a gut check to push my body
to its edges—inflate it

to the point just before it pops,
or as so often happens, just after.

I have learned so much
from my mistakes. Do not pet

a dog’s ass when it’s not looking,
or anyone’s ass for that matter.

If someone offers me a drink,
I’ve taken it and spilled it

into my mouth. Swallowed it
quickly. This is one way

to test how hollow you are.
Do not despair. Inside us

is enough space for even
the most grotesque-looking creatures.

The liver, the lover—

there are worse things
to spill than the stomach.

Kien Lam

When we die, the money we can’t keep
But we’ll probably spend it all
’cause the pain ain’t cheap.
Doctors say I’m the illest
’cause I’m suffering from realness.

Ye (excerpts from “No Church in the Wild” and “Niggas in Paris”)

A is for almost, arriving, my father’s death.
B is for bear, which he does and does not do.
C is for care and critics and leaving them to their caskets.
D is for damn, which your father does not give but must.
E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break
Breach. F is for farther along we’ll understand why
Fire greets us at every door and we’ve lost our way
In the sky. Now where, where should we turn?
G is for good, the shy speechless sound of fruit
Falling from its tree. Me, you, there in the woods
Watching the pines shatter shadow in the light
Wind. H is for horses in the high cotton,
The crack in their hooves carrying your grandfather
And your grandfather’s grandfather down the hill
Until two stomps on the barn floor orphans them
Again, dust, dust. I is for in, as in in the blood we bear
All sorts of madness but bear, bear we must.
J is for jaundiced, which you never were.
K is for keep. Keep your wilderness wild, your caves neat.
L is lift and lymph, the node they cut
From beneath your grandfather’s arm.
M is for misery, which turns and breaks in
Though I wish it would not. Leaf
Leaning on a pond. Blood on a sock.
N is for nature and nearly and how I’ve come
To love; nearly, nearly I come to you, my falcon
Hood pulled tight; my talons tucked; Lord,
Let me not touch. O is for out and the owl
You say sits on your nose. P is for please
As in “Please, son, don’t visit me”
And yet I visited and did not please, and he would not
Touch your leaf, afraid his rot would
Make the petals fall. A lovely love—
No, not at all. Q is for quince, its yellow-breasted
Bell knocking against my father’s deathbed
Window, the light, the light too on his dying
Bed, what you opened your mouth to and tried
To swallow. R is for road where we lay,
Sometimes, because we wish not to exist
And wish and wish and wish. And must.
S is for…

Roger Reeves

Among the killings. Among the permits. Among the dull transparency.
Among the hunger. Among the family beyond my reach. Among the
labor pool. Among that type of bread. Among the registered voters,
among the paperless statements. Among the eye of the beholder. I’m
lost among your ethics. Among New World glossaries. Among the
pages of windows. I’m lost inside your mesosphere on what’s toxic
and what’s not — in America. I am certainly lost at the political match.
Among recurring wars no one dares to injure on the ride home.
Among the ink tracking, MY GOD, new moods helping to reimagine
a world beyond the sunrise. Among the maps they used to leave in our
hair. “Celia got away, bad hip and all.” Among electronic billboards
jammed with the Black faces of runaways, don’t call this toll-free
number if you see her armed and dangerous, healing from the law.
Among marijuana fields owned by the same old same old. Against the
embargo of time.

Nikki Wallschlaeger

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

Thank you for being my lifelong partner
Thank you for being my strong anchor
Thank you for all your love and support
Thank you for picking me up when I fall short
Thank you for all your sacrifices
Thank you for all your sound advices
Thank you for everything you do for our family
Thank you for your bottomless generosity
Thank you for always keeping it real with me

Donny Trương

Unprepossessing girl in the café recognized me as the author of two books

before this and asked for my advice, I said

each line has been an accident, staring at the texture

of the plaster on the wall behind her, rivulets cords tendons the lines may stand

if I remove myself, my will ruins it I might not have said that and

recalling exactly what I said would help, I wait for it though waiting

can be a mistake that generates willfulness, I struggled to put this into words

as strong as my conviction, so what advice could I give you I said

Jana Prikryl

How kind of you
to turn it down
to crickets, the possible is here
in every judgment I try on
against myself, if you enjoy
a more original surmise
then too I grow
acquainted with regret

Jana Prikryl