Hanggang sa maging desperado, sasayaw at mag-aalay ng itlog kay Sta. Clara sa Obando, magdadasal sa iba pang Santa at Birhen, maglalakad nang paluhod sa simbahan ng Quiapo at Baclaran. | Desperation sets in, and they dance and offer eggs to Santa Clara in Obando, walk on their knees inside the Quiapo and Baclaran shrines.

“How did you call me? Where am I? And what year is it?”

A folio celebrating play and performance within the queer South Asian experience

A interview with Jasjyot Singh Hans

An interview with writer and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury

from Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s acclaimed bilingual play

Hear the chants.

Mehfil, a folio from The Margins—and the second installment of the I Want Sky series—celebrates a spirit of play and performance within the queer South Asian experience, both within the subcontinent and across the diaspora.

This is what I learned
the hard way to call precious.

“Serenade” and “बहार / Spring”

we shudder red

don’t block the mountains with windows
or walls, even

You collected fallen petals from a rose

And what are we left
with without language?

this was never going to be easy

i don’t quite believe in God but i believe in music

“I wanted to understand my family’s pull toward faith because I don’t feel that pull.”

With our existence contested, denied, stricken from history, it is no wonder it takes the evidence of other lives to confirm the solidity of our bodies under our fingers’ touch.

You desire a final frame / that suits and comforts, / a framing that supersedes / a death denied

We reveled in the way our unlikely friendships disturbed the world around us. In each other’s bodies, we found joy and brotherhood.

The sea’s sunlit hues, the model-like beach goers that crowd the snack bar, the fruit from the south that tastes of the earth—they are totally unremarkable to her.

to need sky / because you are sun / forgive forgive / the world is crueler / without you in it

my mother gives love / through the severity of / past and future tragedies

I kiss / you & the sands roam every valley to ride this / wind. I kiss you & suddenly we are home again

desperate / we deceived ourselves / this time it will be different / fooled by the coldest winter disguised / as spring

I drive two hours to grieve a person I have never met, and my grief is a country without borders.

My whole life I heard her sing. / I never heard her speak.

Should you die my beloved / I will become a dyke / cut my hair to the scalp / demand history to know wrong / is done if you are taken from me

I tried to be a good daughter / and tell the right story to the guests, who were / always listening from their window across the road.

On making critical connections to the long legacies of intraracial and cross-racial Black and Asian American lesbian organizing and community building.

On the spaces we exist in and the legacies we leave behind

“I was interested in a coming-of-age story that wasn’t about running away from the domestic space but about burrowing and binding and rooting more deeply.”

Rahul Mehta and SJ Sindu read from their debut novels, Marriage of a Thousand Lies and No Other World

An interview with spoken word duo DarkMatter on radical desis, the legacy of Partition, Twitter poems and The Perks of Being a Wallflower

My palms cannot hold back the shifting currents. / They can slap a rhythm, hoist / a banner, hold / your face tenderly between them

The Leche author’s first novel—set in Hawaii and replete with lush pop-cultural references—can be read as a postmodern YA gem.

“Pacquiao became the second man in boxing history to win world titles in six different weight divisions. There he was: our uncle, our Tito, our brother, our kuya.”

A round-up of articles, interviews and videos featuring Salgado, who was recently among the first undocumented immigrants to be featured on the cover of TIME magazine. The artist and activist will be screenprinting at AAWW’s launch party tonight.