I feel naive when I think of it now,
how carelessly I stood before him,

like a ballet dancer in a dressing room
bright with the backs of other girls.

This was before the coldness he nursed
and kept warm between his thighs.

I waited too long for a thaw—he waited too.
Taking him into my mouth, I knew the ache

of winter. I heard the silences
grow as a field of stones between us.

When I look back at my body, young
in the bedroom dark, lit by a perpetual city,

I am gripping a rock in my right hand
and he is gripping a rock in his right hand.

We face each other, muscles poised for sex
or war. Who dropped the rock?

Who cast it? I’m unsure,
even now, who cried mercy first.

Ama Codjoe

I was newly naked: aware of myself
as a separate self, distinct from dirt and bone.

I had not hands enough,
and so, finally, uncrossed my arms.

In trying to examine one body part,
I’d lose sight of another. I couldn’t

imagine what I looked like during
the fractured angles of sex.

At the river’s edge, it was impossible
to see all of myself at once.

I began to understand nakedness
as a feeling.

It was a snake, loose and green;
it was the snake skin, coiled and discarded.

The shedding chained itself
like a balloon ribboned to a child’s wrist.

Morning’s birdsong reminded me
of the sloughing off of skin.

The rumored beauty of my husband’s first
wife never bothered me before.

I missed the sensation of being fixed
in amber. Then the hair in the comb,

fingernail clippings, the red mole on my
left breast grown suddenly bigger.

I perceived my likeness in everything:
the lines on my palm as the veins

of a leaf, my mind as a swarm of flies
humming over something sugary or dead,

my vulnerability as the buck
I’d kill, then wrap myself inside,

my hair as switchgrass, twine, and nest,
a roving cloud my every limb.

Ama Codjoe

Chen Chen writes about being a queer Chinese American. He opens up about his identity and family. His interactions with his mother on his sexual preference are hilarious. His honesty and humor come to across in this collection.

What if, Betye, instead of a rifle or hand
grenade—I mean, what if after
the loaded gun that takes two hands
to fire, I lay down the splintered broom
and the steel so cold it wets
my cheek? What if I unclench the valleys
of my fist, and lay down
the wailing baby?
Gonna burn the moon in a cast-iron skillet.
Gonna climb the men who, when they see my face, turn into stony mountains.
Gonna get out of the kitchen.
Gonna try on my nakedness like a silk kimono.
Gonna find me a lover who eats nothing but pussy.
Let the whites of my eyes roll, roll.
Gonna clench my toes.
Gonna purr beneath my own hand.
Gonna take down my hair.
Try on a crown of crow feathers.
Gonna roam the wide aisles of the peach grove, light dripping off branches like syrup, leaves brushing the fuzz on my arms.
—You dig?—
Gonna let the juice trickle down my chin.
Gonna smear the sun like war paint across my chest.
Gonna shimmy into a pair of royal blue bell-bottoms.
Gonna trample the far-out thunderclouds, heavy in their lightness.
Watch them slink away.
Gonna grimace.
Gonna grin.
Gonna lay down my sword.
Pick up the delicate eggs of my fists.
Gonna jab the face that hovered over mine.
It’s easy to find the lips, surrounded as they are in minstrel black.
Gonna bloody the head of every god, ghost, or swan who has torn into me—pried me open with its beak.
Gonna catch my breath in a hunting trap.
Gonna lean against the ropes.
Gonna break the nose of mythology.
—Goodnight John-Boy—
Gonna ice my hands in April’s stream.
Gonna scowl and scream and shepherd my hollering into a green pasture.
Gonna mend my annihilations into a white picket fence.
Gonna whip a tornado with my scarlet handkerchief.
Spin myself dizzy as a purple-lipped drunkard.
Gonna lay down, by the riverside, sticky and braless in the golden sand.

Ain’t gonna study war no more.
Ain’t gonna study war no more.
Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Ama Codjoe

We Are Mermaids from Stephanie Burt, a Professor of English at Harvard, is compelling, thrilling, and daring. She writes openly about trans sex and literature. What I loved most from this collection are poems on punctuation marks. I’ll definitely reread this book again in the near future.

The earth said
remember me.
The earth said
don’t let go,

said it one day
when I was
accidentally
listening, I

heard it, I felt it
like temperature,
all said in a
whisper—build to-

morrow, make right be-
fall, you are not
free, other scenes
are not taking

place, time is not filled,
time is not late, there is
a thing the emptiness
needs as you need

emptiness, it
shrinks from light again &
again, although all things
are present, a

fact a day a
bird that warps the
arithmetic of per-
fection with its

arc, passing again &
again in the evening
air, in the pre-
vailing wind, making no

mistake—yr in-
difference is yr
principal beauty
the mind says all the

time—I hear it—I
hear it every-
where. The earth
said remember

me. I am the
earth it said. Re-
member me.

Jorie Graham

After Toyota dealer provided a list of recommendations for repair and tune up, I took my minivan to Khang Auto for the following services:

• Replace 6 spark plugs (tune up)
• Replace right front axle
• Replace 2 lower ball joints
• AC service
• Check alarm horn

Total cost: $1,200

It was still a big cost, but much less that $7,723.93 the dealer had quoted. Another big item left to do is replacing the timing cover gasket. The dealer quote was $4,200.79. I will try to get this one done in the near future. I wanted to keep this car for as long as I can. Hopefully, it won’t cost me too much more to maintain. I don’t want to spend another $50,000 or $60,000 for a brand new car. Depending on a vehicle sucks.

Last month, I wrote the follow message to Dan’s teachers:

Dear Ms. B and Ms. B

I hope you are doing well.

Since we didn’t get a chance for a teacher-parent conference last fall, my wife and I would like to touch base with you on our son Dan. How has he been performing in school? How is he doing socially?

Based on the progress reports sent home along with your feedback, Dan still needs to improve in certain areas. When Dan received his communicator award, we were proud of him. He didn’t explain to us how he earned it, but he said that Ms. B nominated him. The communicator award had us wondering how he is doing socially at school. At home, he has been less communicative. He also had a few outbursts, in which he could not control his emotion.

We would like to get him all the support he needs and we would like to start with his teachers who he interacts with everyday.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Donny Truong

Ms. B, his Spanish teacher, replied:

Hi, Mr. Truong,

Thank you for your message and for checking in. As I noted on Dan’s interim for the third quarter, he needs to improve academically in math. He tends to rush through his work and has not performed well on math assessments. Currently he is in a small group for remediation that meets during our afternoon Roar block twice weekly; we are working on fractions (addition and subtraction, and also multiplication of a fraction by a whole number). Dan is in this group with two other students, so it is a nice size for getting some extra help. Dan seems to enjoy being in the group so far. Dan also really seems to enjoy math, and he does self-advocate if he needs help, which is great. I am hopeful that the extra help in a small group will also help to boost his confidence in himself with regards to math.

In my classroom occasionally Dan has loud outbursts, but not often. He is well liked by his classmates and works well with others in the class, both in partners and in small groups. He does need redirection at times, as he can easily become distracted. I will continue to work with Dan and encourage him to slow down when completing his work. As a general rule, I try to emphasize the positive in my classroom, and Dan responds well to both the positives and to the times when I might need to correct/redirect him. He is a very sweet and conscientious young man who strives to do well. He does need reminders sometimes about talking, rather than working on the task at hand.

I hope that the above gives you a good idea of how Dan is doing/working in my classroom. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out. Sending warm regards to your family, with a special hello to Dao. Take care, and have a nice night.

Kind regards,

Ms. B

One of my favorite pieces is “Beauty School.” I love the way Alice Fulton compares lyrical poetry to Miles Davis: “you don’t have to write your poem every day. You just have to touch your poem every day.” This collection is filled with dark beauty with music poetry for your reading pleasure.

In this life,
I was very minor.

I was a minor lover.
There was maybe a day, a night
or two, when I was on.

I was, would have been,
a minor daughter,
had my parents lived.

I was a minor runner. I was
a minor thinker. In the middle
distance, not too fast.

I was a minor mother: only
two, and sometimes,
I was mean to them.

I was a minor beauty.
I was a minor buddhist.
There was a certain symmetry, but
it, too, was minor.

My poems were not major
enough to even make me
a “minor poet,”

but I did sit here
instead of getting up, getting
the gun, loading it.

Counting,
killing myself.

Olena Kalytiak Davis