1 Teh-chang came home a couple of days after the surgery, wheeled out of the hospital with a cotton bandage wrapped around his head cartoon-style and, even stranger-looking, a white mesh Styrofoam netting gathered into a point on top of that, which made him resemble a delicate fruit packaged for long-distance transportation. He had survived …
On Christmas we wake up Puerto Rican. That’s when our grandmother stops pretending that hers is our only blood and lets our grandfather’s bleed back in. She stands at the feet of our beds and pulls on our blanketed toes. “Wake up, you two,” she says, holding up an album cover. “Merry Christmas.” All year …
At dinner that night, Lo chops off her boyfriend’s head. He’s explaining again, holding forth about how she just has a better eye for cleaning than he does, it’s a compliment to her that she even notices when something’s out of place, he wishes he could be as detail oriented as her—and she slinks into …
1 Get a job at the local bowling alley when your mom starts drinking again. Take whatever position they are willing to give you. You will be fifteen years old with no experience, three-fifths of a mustache, and the charisma of a dried pickle, so your only offer’ll be to man concessions for what you …
Someone holds the makeshift beach up from one end, and the world floods, swell surging to one side of the homemade wave machine before the water rushes back, quick, aggressive, eroding bits of the science-fair project with violence before softening slowly, slowly. Repetition eventually grinds everything down to nothing. We are supposed to make a …
(To use the PDF embedder to see both poems, use the arrows on the bottom left-hand side.) See more poems from Issue 17.2 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.
I know an old man who lives at the edge of the world, in Alaska, a town called Bethel. The first people arrived via ice bridge. Now we fly on planes. The old man lives with an old woman, his wife. He built the house they live in. He builds other things too, boats, furniture, …
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us … a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam … the only home we’ve ever known.—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994) Drill, baby, drill!—Michael Steele, 2008 Republican National Convention Photographed from 18,000 miles in 1972, Earth had the lookof a marble, or so people …
Red-tailed hawk Redring from a milk jugencountered on the MisheMokwa Trail But it wasn’t that plasticpiece of dread No The redof someone’s pony-tail holder something shedas involuntarily as redblood cells Mariafatigued unknowing blamingage I blamed some unknownhiker careless I thought droppingtrash amidst the blacksage and juniper Whodrinks milk on ahike I should havethought but didn’t …
At six, I didn’t know more than riding a Schwinn and climbing banyan trees. “Do you believe in God?”the two blonde girls from four doors down asked as our bikes circled endlessly in figure eightsaround each other. Well, I suppose one girl askedwhile the other simply rode, silently and blonde. They weren’t twins, but a …
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