A Girl Called Mariah

“Where are you from?” Startled, I looked back toward the voice. I had just said goodbye to Neda and was still in the process of hanging up the phone.   A blonde lady was looking at me. She had braided hair neatly aligned on her left shoulder and was wearing a blue biking outfit with white stripes and a white cap with blue stripes. Beside her was a brown-haired guy with a bit darker complexion who wore a biking outfit, too. While still on the phone I noticed them a couple of minutes earlier parking their… Read More »A Girl Called Mariah

Shikata ga nai

In 1934, the snow-covered Sierras peeking over a brown rampart of foothills looked close enough to touch. Our strawberry fields shimmered in the summer heat. Grape trellises shaded tongue-in-groove walls, but the little yellow house my father built felt stifling in the summer. We’d eat a lunch of okazu (vegetables from our garden, mixed with a small amount of meat) and rice. Then I would rest beside Papa on a wooden platform in the shade of our walnut tree.  One hot day, my younger brother Yukio sauntered by and said, “I sure would like to… Read More »Shikata ga nai

The Surface of Mars

It’s a world full of holes, Mick thinks—as though a child has taken the scissors to it. Real, but full of dark spots. Shit happens in such indefinite terrain. He doffs the 3-D glasses and the surface of Mars flattens out into picture. Three hours before the press conference. He can feel his throat beginning to clog over.  Pushing back in his chair, he rubs his eyes and studies the rover. A converted dune buggy with solar panels on its back, it is marooned a couple of million miles away. Errored-out, it has refused a… Read More »The Surface of Mars

The Treachery

(after Renée Cox’s “Yo Mama’s Last Supper”) Renée Cox’s “Yo Mama’s Last Supper” is a full-color five panel photographic installation that features twelve men at a banquet table with the artist herself standing, nude, in the center, a white shawl draped over her outstretched arms, as if giving blessing. When the piece toured in New York City, it was met with fury by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani. He said that it was “outrageous”, that it was “disgusting and anti-Catholic,” that it was a gross misrepresentation of the original. Cox’s initial reply to the mayor was, “Get… Read More »The Treachery

I Am Hungry

March 24, 2020 “I want something to eat. I want something Mommy.” It’s only one week after the NYC public schools shuttered because of the Coronavirus. We are still in complete emergency mode with no plan A or B in sight. We can’t know, because when you’re in it, there’s no such thing as reflection, that “The Pandemic,” has only just begun. I am here. Home. Trapped on the 30th floor in our glass box, high in the sky, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, apartment. I am stuck with Emmy, the 3 ½ year old who used… Read More »I Am Hungry

Five Poems

motherhood What is love if not uprooting yourself to follow impossibilitiescrossing seas and skies to hollow futures吃苦 (eat bitterness) and sun-grazed heartache.You forget your childhood but your mother-tongue clings and clenches. My grandmother used to say that the moon is bigger herebut,  maybe it hangs lower in the night skyeither way, the people in this country are blessed by the tides and its godsdollar-fed and numbed by shopping malls and car ownershipso you forget about your homesickness and your home. What is love if not discoveringyour dream was a parched hallucinationborne from too many hours standing wide-eyedand still rising… Read More »Five Poems

Legacy

Slavery. Jim Crow. School-to-Prison Pipeline. Now that our mule has plowed those forty acres, let me build a little house on one corner of it. Deep addiction, like jail, distorts time. On one hand, I was acutely aware of every minute, especially the time between fixes. Especially the time between being dopesick and getting well. Being dopesick is like Burning Man. Impossible to describe unless you’ve experienced it. Naw – being dopesick is one thousand times more miserable than Burning Man and people should not experience it, ever. Being dopesick is like having a cold… Read More »Legacy

Going Mental

My therapist says it is a disability, I checked disabled. My therapist says it is a disorder, I made a list. There are seven.My therapist says I will be pushing a shopping cart down the road one day talking to myself.I say, I already do in the grocery store.My therapist says I will end up homeless.I tell her a few of the places I sleep: Place I live #1: I live in a small apartment on the northside of the city above a flower shop.Fresh cut flowers gather in the bottom of the dumpster; I dive in and make a bouquet.My… Read More »Going Mental

Balancing Act

But what do you do when a walkaround the neighborhood meansyou might commit mass murder in mere minutes?I look down, notice a beetle hunting for a meal.A worm wriggles in desperation for the moisture of the soil,or a roly-poly scurries across my path.I adjust to make sure my foot doesn’t crush.I want to look up, bathe in the rich colors of the treesthat provide the oxygen I breathe,appreciate the clouds that give gentle shelter from the sun,or the horizon that offers perspectiveand allows my eyes to rest.My walks are a balancing act.I gaze up to… Read More »Balancing Act

It Is Time To

Wake upWake up now It is timeto remember the visionI gave you long ago:feel merunning fast and freenose to the groundsinging loud and clearover old brittle bonesof past lives and past lovers;a howlingwild scented freedomand ripeness of beingcalling you home. Look upLook up now See your yearningfor what it is,an ember of salvation;come to the woodsso I may dance for youslow and steady,weave your dreamswith mysteries and magic,soft fur, sweet berries, rain scented sleep,tiny tracks barely visible beneath snow,as I wait and anticipateyour earth kisses like smoke on the wind at dawn. Breathe deeplyBreathe deeply… Read More »It Is Time To