tangled gold necklaces knotted/ with grief, chains my mother will not break.

I call myself “child” now like |/ ghost who calls itself alive.

သူတို့မျှော်လင့်နေကြတဲ့/ အနာဂတ်ကို/ ငါတို့ မြင်ခွင့်ရပါ့မလား။ |
do their protests/ sound out a future/
we’ll be able to witness?

映 with a skinny sun radical and 其 a pronoun/ pointing to who knows what.

What if he just said the bird waited forever to alight.

I am the world inside/ of every persimmon

Joy is impossible to fake, they say.

I am trying to imagine my new life when I am returned to the place of my parents’ birth.

Now it’s raining and I’m sixteen and unlicensed.

There are few men who will communicate with you in all the languages you know.

“Salon Sonnet” and “Matchmaker”

Most schools have cut their French programs,/ but teaching it here sparkles.

I’m alive and I have an appetite/ for longing.

For a second, I imagine how it feels to inhabit a body people desire like gold.

Kakolór pati kan álang na tulang nin tawó / an pigrunot na bagás asín ginibong puto. |
Especially when you notice the rice flour / that she uses is the color of human bone.

where, fifty, years, earlier, lolo, learned, engineering

My arms ache/ in the cereal aisle.

you choose to put yourself beneath its flag

I once lost my name in a pyre

“Ringu (1998)” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)”