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I’d gone there years before not meaning to stop from the capital northto the lowlands where the small highway joins the narrow-gauge railthat runs from the plantations to Puerto Barrios where bananas meet the ships and flow as though on plates into their holds as Neruda wrotein 1948. Then two days northward to their destined cities then outward by boxcar and semi to the
My father fixed my broken chair with a single shot of vodka,built a bicycle from cigarette butts, a couch from shattered bricks.He sewed teddy bears from snow, cobbled shoes from chicken soup,tailored dust into sweaters, trained my socks to sing like canaries.He planted bent, rusty nails that grew into succulent tomatoes,taught his shoes to cook dinner while he poured me a
High holy enzyme rile my saliva nameless stimulus splinter my sleep merciful researchers pearl out my urgesfor gossip for gristle. already in your presence I feel myself changed I froth at the bell I scratch at the cage I rage in my basement hutch. watch: there is no place outside of the brain
Every evening at 5:00 pm, the third wife would raise a bottle of liquor above her head and yell Ding-dong! It was five o’clock somewhere and somewhere was here.
My journey into the expanse of the lyric essay began when I opened Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. At that time, I had been writing poetry for over ten years, exploring motherhood, mental health, and my Asian American heritage. I saw my work as lyric poetry that drew from the bloodlines of my first love, Sharon Olds, and her transformative poem, “Monarchs.”