My Dearest Đạo,

It’s hard to believe our first-born turns 14 today. You are well-liked in school as well as scouting and you have friends in both places.

I am glad to see that you don’t get bullied or discriminated against for being an Asian American. When I was your age, I faced both; therefore, I dreaded going to school. Everyday seemed long as hell. Maybe I got picked on because my English was not good.

Speaking of school, I hope you are doing well. I haven’t checked on your assignments because I want you to be independent and to be responsible for your own work. You still need to get better at staying on tasks.

At home, you get along with Đán the most. I wish you treat Xuân and Vương better. Even if they annoy you, they are still your baby brothers. I want you to love and protect them. You are always a big brother they will look up to.

As for your mother, you, and me, we are getting along fine for the most part. Well, happy birthday, my son!

Love,
Dad

At home Đán is a caring grandson, son, and brother. He loves his grandmother and he is closest to Đạo, his older brother. His interactions with his parents and younger siblings depend on his mood. Đán enjoys speedy, challenging sports including snowboarding and rollerblading. He’s a fast learner, especially with any activities he is interested in. For example, he likes building PCs; therefore, he excels at learning all the parts and putting them all together.

His challenges are lack of self-control and discipline. He doesn’t know when to turn off his brain. Asking him to get off his game or taking a break from his PC would spark an emotional breakdown. Some nights he couldn’t go to sleep because he could not stop thinking about what he was doing during the day. Once he is focused on something, he can’t turn his mind off. As a result, he can’t concentrate on schoolworks or other activities.

At school, he didn’t do too well in previous years. He struggled the most during the pandemic. He could not stay focused through online learning. He fell behind academically in math and language arts. He often zoomed out during class time. His father had to sit next to him to remind him to pay attention.

This academic year, however, he has made tremendous improvements. He listens to his teachers. He gets along well with his classmates. He enjoys school more this year. His teachers speak positively of his performance and behavior in classes. Although he seems to be doing better in a smaller environment, he is still struggling with staying focused on reading comprehension and staying on tasks.

One of his previous teachers recognized his weakness during the pandemic; therefore, whenever he was taking his tests, she would pull him out of the group and read the questions to him. Because she was reading the questions, he couldn’t rush through to just click on an answer without knowing the question. As a result, he was able to slow down and to think before selecting a random answer. Đán needs to be reminded to help him stay on track.

after Romare Bearden’s Patchwork Quilt (1969)

My back is turned from him again,
but this time I’m not hunched
over the quilt—his rough thumbs
gripping my waist—I’m standing
in the middle of a room constructed
with pencil, adhesive, and paper.
One foot in the basin, I will scrub
his cigarette hands and yellow eyes
off my skin. I will clean my sex
and start again. Another will come
and I’ll forget the coat hung gently
on the hook—different than the way
he took me. He shook like a startled
fish caught in a great blue heron’s beak.
Yes, a woman of my kind
has seen the sea. The first time, I gasped
at its glistening mouth.
Endlessly the waves replaced themselves.
I launder my nakedness like a uniform
with water from the pitcher.
Soon another will arrive who I will
wash away. There is a man who dares
to face me, he considers
every angle. He built my form
with precise lines and foraged scraps
of brown. From the harsh shape
my elbow makes, the builder knows
this is a portrait of work,
not pleasure. I love how softly
he touches me, though all I want
is to be left, to spend a morning in bed
alone with the images of dream.

Ama Codjoe

This collection took me a bit to feel the vibes. Tibble’s poems are honest, heartfelt, and humorous. She is a young poet with so much potential. I’ll definitely go back for a second read.

To get the number of pages for the dynamic portions, I logged into MODX admin and started with the Faculty Working Papers. The record shows 1,404 pages. Since SiteImprove crawled 2,098 pages and the Faculty Working Papers alone take 70% of the total pages, I wanted to dig a bit further into the database. The MySQL table for content shows a total of 5,164 pages (these included everything from public to hidden to unpublished pages).

Here are the numbers for the current dynamic portions:

• Faculty Working Papers: 1404 pages
• Course Catalog: 373 pages
• Course Schedules: 72 pages (Backend programming is required to import the Excel file (CSV) into the database (MySQL) and populate an HTML table for the course schedules)
• Student Organizations: 70 pages
• JD Focus Areas & Concentrations: 18 pages
• Class Notes: 70 pages
• Clinic & Externships: 15 pages
• People Finder (Dynamically pulled from faculty, admin & staff directories in MODX as well as linking to bios and departments outside of MODX)

There’s a body marching toward mine.
I can feel its breasts and stomach, hot

against my back. Its breath in my hair.
I accumulate bodies—my own.

The tattoo braceleting my wrist.
My earlobe like a pin hole camera.

My vagina, untouched. My vagina,
stretched. So many bodies treading

toward the others. And the bruises I conceal
with makeup and denial. The scars I inflict

on myself, and the ones I contort
with a mirror to see. I didn’t always know

we’d be joined like this—that I couldn’t
leave any of myself behind.

In Trisha Brown’s Spanish Dance
a performer raises both arms like a bailora

and shifts her weight from hip to hip, knee
to knee, ankle to ankle, until she softly

collides with another dancer. The two travel
forward, pelvis to sacrum, stylized fingers

flared overhead, until they meet a third woman
and touch her back like stacked spoons.

Dressed in identical white pants and long
sleeves, the dancers repeat the steps

until, single file, five women shuffle
forward-they go no further.

The dance lasts the exact length of Bob Dylan’s
rendition of “Early Mornin’ Rain.”

How many versions of myself pile
into the others, arms lifted in surrender,

torsos twisting to the harmonica?
But the dancers—I’m moved by their strange

conga line. A train of women traversing
the stage, running gently into a wall.

Ama Codjoe

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