Windward Review Vol. 22 (2024): REVOLUTION

WINDWARD
REVIEW
VOL. 22, 2024
REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION
WINDWARD REVIEW VOL. 22 2024
Senior Executive Editor
Dr. Robin Carstensen
Managing Editor
Dylan Lopez
Creative Director, Senior Editor
Zoe Elise Ramos Jmj
Copyeditor, Social Media
Amanda King
Associate Editors
Daniel Broussard, Ameliah Cook, Alex Ellis, Bree Garcia, Roy
Gomez, Emily Miksch, Ana Sherrill, Brandon Soto, Alex Villela |
All Students of ENGL 4385: Studies in Creative Writing: Literary
Publishing, Windward Review, Spring 2024
Design Team
Dr. Catherine Schumann, Ameris Martinez-Guedry, Chloe Stanley,
Tito Valdez | All Students of ENGL 3378: Document Design
and Publishing, Spring 2024
Cover Art
Thảo Ðinh, “Taking the Leap”, photography
WR is a not-for-profit journal established by Robb and Vanessa
Furse Jackson. We are managed on a voluntary basis by students
anddd faculty from the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
English Department, Islander Creative Writers, and Corpus Christi
community. We are generously funded by the Paul and Mary
Haas Foundation. Special thanks to the TAMU-CC College of
Liberal Arts for their continued support.
Follow us:
FB @The Windward Review @Islander Creative Writers
IG @thewindwardreview
www. tamucc.edu/liberal-arts/windward-review/
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Contents
Letter from the Senior Executive Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Pulled by Sound - D. Ellis Phelps and Nupur Maskara . . . 10
burning dust bowl - Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant . . . . . 12
rephrasing borders - Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant . . . . 13
tulips in blood red - Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant . . . . . 14
How to Stop a Colonizer’s Tongue: A Sonnet After Visiting
Anzaldúa’s Archives - Abra J. Espitia Gist . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Coyolxauhqui Takes Back Her Dance -
Abra J. Espitia Gist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
When we pray, “May he rest in peace” this prayer is also
for the living - Abra J. Espitia Gist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Mitztemoa Noyollo the song of tonalli, teyolía, tinnitus,
and ihiyotl - Abra J. Espitia Gist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Revolution with a Pen - Lisha Adela García . . . . . . . . . . .22
For the 17th Time - Lisha Adela García . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Hornets - Lisha Adela García. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
liber exodus - Bonnie Stump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
faithful company - Bonnie Stump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Hiatus - L.T. Ward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
When You See the Train Coming - Kaitlyn Winston . . . . . 33
The Mess We Made - Jeran Jongema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Echo - Jeran Jongema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3

Warriors of Joy - Laurence Musgrove. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Pearl’s Return - Annie Huckabee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Fifteen - Rebecca Thompson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
and now, a poem - Cryptid Parke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
The Strand - Ahmahdre Turner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Once upon the trees -Arik Mitra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Behold! Everyone’s a market! -Arik Mitra . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Machine Rush - Arik Mitra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Fields Far Away - Leanne Haas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Distance: A Human Conundrum - Elijah Esquivel. . . . . . . 50
Dreamer: Pauper to a Prince - Elijah Esquivel. . . . . . . . . .51
Castle Luxemburg - Elijah Esquivel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Ramshackle Pier, Ocean Dr - Elijah Esquivel . . . . . . . . . 54
The Lens We Received - Elijah Esquivel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Untitled shahai - Barbara Anna Gaiardoni and
Andrea Vanacore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Mothers with Rosaries - Elizabeth N. Flores . . . . . . . . . . . .57
Blind Revolution - Lisha Adela García and
E.D. Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
Quetzal’s Journey - Ethan Norales De La Rosa . . . . . . . .59
Ruby Rhapsody - Thảo Ðinh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Whispering Strum - Thảo Ðinh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Race (The Universe) - Thảo Ðinh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
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2024 Robb Jackson High School Poetry Awards
Letter from the Managing Editor - Dylan Lopez. . . . . . . 78
Spring Strings - Nayla Silva (3rd Place) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
The Wizard’s Lizard - Annora Bailey (2nd Place). . . . . 82
The Mulattos - Jordan Laningham (1st Place) . . . . . . . 84
All Things Revolution - Aaron Thompson. . . . . . . . . . . . . .86
workingroots - Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa . . . . . . . . . . . .88
Sadboi, a brief & sad simile - Osmani R.
Alcaraz-Ochoa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
TV for Dinner - Alé Cota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
A Subaltern Revolution - Dharshani Lakmali
Jayasinghe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
If You Can’t Stand the Heat - Jennifer Thomas. . . . . . . . .96
The Monuments - Joshua Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
Age of Heroes - Paul Juhasz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
That Strange Being - Arik Mitra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Untimely Chord - Arik Mitra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104
Poem for the World - Stephen Gambill . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Fight or Flight - U.C.L. Vilches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
“Still I Rise” - U.C.L. Vilches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114
Mémoires of St. Guillotine - Leslie Lea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Psalm for October - Leslie Lea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5
―

Nuremburg Night - Michael Chouinard. . . . . . . . . . . . . .121
Taking the Leap - Thảo Ðinh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
How to Win Subjects and Manipulate (the) People -
Kyle Carson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128
The Great Stew - Tom Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
To Survive - Nick Chhoeun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
‘Mixee Udon’: A Recipe for Recovery -
Pheobe Sheng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
A Flower is Meat - Hannah Murry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
generation - Dustin Marley Hackfeld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
cicada - Dustin Marley Hackfeld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
the seeker - Dustin Marley Hackfeld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Skippin’ Stones - Stefan Sencerz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Contributors’ Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6

Letter from the
Senior Executive Editor
Welcome to this special issue of Windward Review in its
22nd year! Resist tyranny and celebrate a revolution with us!
In the summer of 2023, America Ferrera was making
headlines for her performance and her character’s critical
speech for women’s rights in the hit film, Barbie, on the heels
of sweeping national and global movements against violent
oppression and imminent threats to democracy. Mahsa Zhina
Amini’s movement—a Woman and Queer movement—was
spreading through Tik Tok, in spite of mainstream media’s
lack of coverage, garnering urgent world-wide attention on the
violent terrorist regime in Iran; Putin was launching his troops
and missiles on neighboring soverign Ukraine to seize their
much coveted oil reserves; the world’s worst displacement
crisis was happening in Sudan with over eight million people
fleeing their homes after a civil war broke out in their capital
Khartoum; in early October 2023, Hamas unleashed terror
at a music festival, taking over 251 Israelites and foreigners
hostage. Israeli armed forces would retaliate with a relentless
attack of fire against Hamas, including against the Palestinians.
As of June 2024, over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed,
nearly 79,000 injured, and millions seek refuge from their
homes and communities that have been bombed out.
An avalanche of indictments against former President
Trump who incited an insurrection against our democratic
elections and breached our national security took place;
meanwhile, Mothers of Liberty were attempting to take
over city library councils to ensure more books are banned,
history erased. Still reeling from SCOTUS’s overturning of
Roe vs. Wade, we find ourselves in what feels like a last gasp
of the patriarchy with its dictatorships grasping for their last
stranglehold of power. We know as editors and writers, our
voice holds power as well, and we can carve a space that
joins a collective, world-wide revolution, resisting tyranny and
demanding justice and freedom for all.
In 2023, Lizbette Ocasio-Russe, our former co-editor
and contest judge for the Windward, and I put our heads
together and worked throughout the Summer and Fall of ‘23
to conceive of a revolutionary volume that would attract a
passionate response from our communities here and widely
beyond. We were inspired by Corpus Christi Poet-Laureates
Emeritus, Alan Berecka and Tom Murphy, and the power of
their collaborative work in their 2017 coedited anthology
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Stone Renga, a collection of 62 poets. Consulting with our
resident haiku expert, Stefan Sencerz, we also wanted to
invite collaborative work. In Spring of 2024, our new class of
editors from English 4385, Literary Publishing announced our
Call for Submissions for Vol. 22 to the Renga Revolution!: a
collaborative volume unlike any other. We would feature a
Flash! Contest and a Japanese poetic tradition of renga or
linked/collaborative poetry to bring together diverse voices in
one powerful call for revolution.
8
―
We see revolution as the need for a deep, systemic
change in a world where fear and violence rooted in old
systems are both erupting and collapsing. What do we imagine
a revolution to be on both grand and small scales? From
nations, governments, and global, local policies to smaller,
private spaces, such as homes, communities, restaurants,
shops, schools, gardens, gyms, etc, people are committing to a
change. How do you see yourself as part of a revolution?
Interested writers from the public were invited to
choose a partner and write any revolutionary-themed poems
that interested them. Renga poets could collaborate with a
living poetry partner, an ancestor, a beloved who has walked
on, or an imaginary partner whose voice still inhabits a strong
presence with them. We wanted fresh and surprising imagery
that grapples with the abstract concept of revolution.
What we learned from Stefan Sencerz: “In Japan, renga
was typically constructed as a linked poem that alternates
between three-lines and two-lines. The three-liners (haiku)
would typically have a structure of 5-7-5 on (or onji) which are
phonetic units roughly corresponding to syllables in English.
(In fact, they are much shorter than typical English syllables.)
Two liners (waki) would have a structure of 7-7 onji. Most
contemporary Western poets, who write haiku and related
forms, have completely abandoned counting syllables. But
they strive for brevity and sparcity, ground their poems in
something concrete, and use strong imagery.”
We hope readers will enjoy this volume as the renga
poems weave in and out of revolutionary flash prose and other
genres of revolutionary writing. Renga poems will follow the
traditional structure, or invert it, fracture it, or disrupt it. Haiku
need not always adhere to the 5-7-5 syllable structure, nor
the waki to the 7-7. Readers will see innovative twists with
syllabics, space, and sound, and an opening renga response
to the inciting poem from the executive editor and our dear
colleague, teacher, and friend.
Sincerely, Robin Carstensen

Robin Carstensen and Lizbette Ocasio-Russe
Inciting Renga
Fall 2023
Goats granite limestone
cliffs moss impasse crisp wind wet
bottomless hollers
Bleating cries escape ravines
Of wounded souls left unseen
November falls to its knees
in red
bombs,
leaves tenthousand
more
besieged
cold
cast flutter
fold
Falling soundless, colors fade
Winter casts its icy rage
9

D. Ellis Phelps and Nupur Maskara
Pulled by Sound
maa adishakti karuna karuna
goddess of energy have compassion
pulled by sound
lone coyote calls
listen listen —mountain hears
grows feet
comes running
a hole soil grains in mid-air
shoveling his way out—mole
same air everywhere
same soil mountain or molehill
how deep the burrow
mole noses to coyote
the three march to the city
above a dove and
a thundering sky underworld
whirling round round
flora, fauna, fungi join
six legs, four, winged, gilled, petalled
10

a chorus rises
—resounding sound
every voice:
harmonious om
city merges into them
pulled by sound a wave a pool
creature, ether, soil
wind, wave, fire — primordial
whirl: a rebirthing
the re-evolution wheel
destroys to re-create
11

Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant
burning dust bowl
industrial waste
land tainted by foul presence
value stripped away
where have the tall grasses gone
the bison-dreams of dawn
driven off, cattle
ranchers wrangle their way to
a burning dust bowl
the aged earth is gored anew
piped. lined. divided by blood
soaked up by the soil
gorged to excess, befitting
evidence of rot
slick puddles of black gold seep
from circular dreams plundered
the stolen prospects
of brutalized displacement
rhetoric denies
reimagine the greened breeze
welcome it to our threshold
12

Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant
rephrasing borders
world shrouded in clouds
fogged bodies and soft masses
that cannot be cleared
what point was there in fearing
the words they had yet to speak
still my mouth rebels
yes, silence is a disease
come. we’ll heal ourselves
cast away any pretense of
conforming speech to appease
reshape your vowels
cough out bloodied consonants
bring language back home
couching the cacophony
deep in your chest, native land
when salted, scream back
here is the abnormal tongue
rephrasing borders
these boundaries unbidden
will no longer hide their shame
13

Pari Sabti and Ian Garrabrant
tulips in blood red
tulips in blood red
and mourning white, rows and rows
upon ashen grass
breaking out from the garden
uncontained they strain against
this land or this land
this blue incessant breakage
to tame is to starve
to ignore is to forget
and never admit to this
bathe your hands in wind
the caress of free seasons
carries your traces
strange places touched by the wind
where are your echoes to end
winding mountain paths
breathe you in like cruel petals
deserting homeland
unfound, unbound reticence
your body defies their will
14

Abra J. Espitia Gist
How to Stop a
Colonizer’s Tongue:
A Sonnet After Visiting Anzaldúa’s Archives
Break
the (cult)ure’s spell –
consensual reality.
Now, take his pen.
Stop
to bite your thumb
in his general direction.
Now, take his sword.
Heal
from oppression
bloodied wounds on tongue, mind, & soul.
Yes, take his gun.
Create
necessary chaos:
melt gun, stab sword in stone, use the pen –
make it your own.
15

Abra J. Espitia Gist
Coyolxauhqui Takes Back
Her Dance
Oh! Great Mother
they are staring at me in the Aztec Templo Mayor
en Tenochtitlan.
I ring my coyolli bells | enter their dreams | carry their wishes
up to the Milky Way
they call me evil sister | ruthless one | defeated one
but they are staring at my dance | down the steps watching
my hips | belly | breasts | shoulders shapeshift
they enter conocimiento | initiating
healing trabajos with
each eye on me
in my wounds
they have fallen
under my serpent spell
16

soon they will enter the night | search
the skies | mark calendars | count days
holler coyote gritos | name my moons | purr canciones
for planting | harvest | talk spirits
dance naked with me
align the blood of their
women with me
enter my
body mind
soul
forever
mesmerized little
luna-souls
17

Abra J. Espitia Gist
When we pray, “May he
rest in peace” this prayer
is also for the living 1
Lineage marks sacred skin geometry beyond my bones
Decoded DNA unravel spiral mysteries:
I have been here before
I have seen this before
I have carried this wound across the cosmos.
I made these medicines in other lifetimes
I have died each little death to remember.
I become hierbera
make limpiezas & te con ruda, romero, albacar, o de salvia
I become sabadora
lay hands con gentle touch, apapaxtli tlawayotl maihpahtli 2
I become partera
midwife and protector of our starseeds
I become consejera
hablamos corazon a corazon until the release is made
I become huesera
set bones back together and make corporeal foundations
18

I become espiritualista
commune with spirit, canto, bailo, and light a fire
I become cuentista
Xochitlatoani to plant seeds with words and songs,
I speak flowers for my people
wake them from dream or nightmare;
whisper across the matrix that caged us all
Recuerda mi hija, the most important tool – it’s already inside you
my heart is your heart, & I am always with you.
1
Quote by Elena Avila R.N., MSN author of Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A
Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health.
2
Healing massage technique Avila learned from one of her Aztec teachers,
Ehekateotl, who describes overcoming chronic rheumatic fever with massage
holistic therapy. The technique is called, in Nahuatl, apapaxtli – in Spanish,
apapachar – which commonly means ‘expression of love,’ but really means
‘to soften’. Tlawayotl means ‘what is generated from the heart of the people,’
and maihpahtli signifies ‘the hands that heal’.
19

Abra J. Espitia Gist
Mitztemoa Noyollo 3 the
song of tonalli, teyolía,
tinnitus, and ihiyotl
I will close this circle
with a remedy
for the ringing inside me
Grito: Mitztemoa Noyollo!
my head – my heart – my liver
my lost luna spirit soul
calls out to you
across the cosmos
Grito: Mitztemoa Noyollo!
time is a spell
I will learn to listen
I will learn to see
I will dance with my body
to escape it
Grito: Mitztemoa Noyollo!
20

Can you feel me pull your heartstrings?
I will shapeshift until you find me
I will search the cenotes and dark caves
Can you heal me with your heartstrings?
Grito: Mitztemoa Noyollo!
If I don’t find your heart today
Grito: Mitztemoa Noyollo!
I will find your heart tomorrow
3
Nahuatl for “My heart is looking for your heart”.
21

Lisha Adela García
Revolution
with a Pen
for Etain Scott
your hand is a mirror,
your fist a brick
each finger a Calla Lilly
typing existence code on a keyboard.
What if you were
a salamander
changing color to suit the scene,
your eyes wild with sunlight
a constellation of colors,
a different reality each day?
What if your grandmother’s words
were tucked in between your vertebrae
and your song
connected to the bell
in front of your voice
and it could howl so loudly
it would scare the hollow wind
of your tomorrows
away from your lungs.
22

In your house, there is a chest
of drawers in every room.
Your mother called them insurance.
Covered by underwear and blankets
are all the answers she forgot
to mention while alive.
You pull out the magic
from the crone drawer
paint a Frida mural on your bedroom wall
or write an opus on the wonder of spiders.
It takes years to figure out that a truck
is a girl’s best friend.
Just throw the vermin away
load the suitcases in the back
and take off with the writer’s coyotes.
What if it was ice cold in June in Texas
and kindness came to sit on your stoop, freezing?
Would you let it in to enjoy your fire?
Or, would you sit in a rocking chair
thinking on the what if’s
licking and licking those un-kissed lips.
23

Lisha Adela García
For the 17th Time
I tell the kids on the block for the 17th time
I am a Mexican American girl
and I like black people just fine,
but this is Texas and I am not old enough yet
to understand the understory
or why it is like talking to a rock
or throwing a small pebble against
a large empty church.
My English was getting better
coming along I thought, until
my sweet sixteen neighbor played
Blue Moon on the piano and sang along.
How could the moon be blue
Without a dream in its heart
Without a love of its own?
For the 17th time my mother
had to explain metaphor.
I got invited to breakfast at the Johnson’s
house one Saturday morning.
I ate something called “pigs in a blanket”
Again, with the naming for the 17th time
my mother said.
Just pretend you are eating frijoles.
24

Story McCarthy beat us up again for the
17th time because he could. We played a game
Called: Kick the Can that lasted until 9:30 p.m.
in the summer. During the day, we fried eggs
on the sidewalk. I learned to punch back.
My mother had to come and get me from 3rd grade
often because Sheila’s gang ripped
the pockets from my new dress
during picture day
and said Mexicans were supposed to study
on the other side of town. My mother
found me at the principal’s office
muddy tear stains on my starched white collar.
She got docked in pay every time she had to pick me up.
“Don’t be so sensitive” she said, “they are uneducated,
uninformed. Just walk away.”
For the 17th time, I just couldn’t.
25

Lisha Adela García
Hornets
A hawk flies over the world’s mercy. Does faith have a
measuring cup? Did Abraham receive bruises when he offered
to sacrifice Isaac? Maria Elena Contreras from El Salvador
put her twelve-year old son alone on La Bestia. The train that
crosses Mexico to the border. What did she tell him to not get
trafficked? What calculus deems that it is better to leave than
stay home and become fodder for drug gangs? Where does
the window to the soul open? What if open, hornets escape?
Where do you draw the line when a baby drowns trying to
cross the Rio Grande with its mother? Where do you find the
corner of forgiveness? Do rivers have corners?
Is the red smoke inside music strong enough to quit
mourning? How much room is there actually inside a person?
If they fill up with light, will they levitate? Frozen ice is intent
that once was water. Don’t you see, this is how forgiveness is
justified? This is why gravestones keep keys. It is the least they
can do to cover a child that has obeyed its mother.
Rio Bravo covers
its banks with light and mesquite
monarch butterflies believe
the wind captures night birds
a child’s death is one of many
26

Bonnie Stump
liber exodus
and a great cry erupts through kemet, for there was not a
single house where there was not one dead.
pharaoh’s rage is soaked in sorrow, the ten plagues weigh
heavy on his pschent and the cities he must sow into greatness
are trembling beneath the might of a foreign deity. he sends
his brother away, with a quivering scowl and blood on his
hands as six hundred-thousand slaves journey free. he keeps
watch until moses’ shadow is a distant and distilled flicker
on the horizon, he lets his eyes wander over trampled-on
sand dunes and his mind thickens with black-grease anger
once more. he hears his son’s voice, sweet and trilling, and
remembers that it is has been ripped from this plane of
existence, a guttural noise clings to the back of his throat, he
would give up his birthright of the two lands if it brought back
his firstborn.
pharaoh thinks of his mother, pulling a basket from the mossgrowth
water and finding a child that eagerly escaped his
death — of two young boys clashing with wooden spears, of
finery and jewelry and magic knee-deep in the black-mud of
the nile. he wishes he could crush the god-snake beneath his
heel, to swing the spear straight into the browned flesh of his
brother’s sternum, to take his child-hands and push the tevah
back into the water.
to unravel the beginnings of the end.
27

Bonnie Stump
faithful company
god please give me something in return for my violent death.
god please give me your vision, your million-eyed gaze, your
dark sight towering. god please watch as he asks over and over
again until i say yes. god please keep track of the roaches that
crawl across my ceiling in the night, may they have warm hiding
places, may their bellies be full, may they skitter away from
the light in time. god please give me your company in the
shower, hair swirling down the drain, soap-sud curtain obscuring
his figure on the other side. god please sit with me on the
cold tiled floor of the kitchen. god please stay beside me when
he calls me in the middle of the night to come downstairs.
god please face the door with me, speed up the time we stand
together — wobbly knees and foreheads inches from the white
peeling paint. god please take the berating for me. god please
hold my hand when he presses me against the floor, god when
he spits in my mouth take the taste, keep it, unravel it into
atoms. god please don’t leave when he makes me undress.
god please sit on the edge of the bed and wait for me. god
please don’t leave me alone in this place. god please take me
with you. i don’t care where we go but i know there’s a beach
somewhere in mexico that’s waiting for us. god i think there’s
a margarita with your name on it. god i think the boys playing
volleyball on the sand are looking at us. god i think there’s
blood in my mouth. god i think this bathing suit is a nice shade
of blue. god i think there’s a rat in the walls, scrabbling away
for freedom like us. god please. god please for the suffering,
let me be free. god please.
28

L.T. Ward
Hiatus
He told me he was the best thing to happen to me. He
said I would never do better than him as I sat across from him,
trembling, ending our relationship. It wasn’t when he got up
from the table to leave first, it wasn’t when I saw his car exit
the parking lot, it wasn’t when I was home and an hour later he
texted how are you doing? It wasn’t even after I’d blocked his
number or gone a week then two without seeing him. It wasn’t
until a Sunday night when I was leaning against my kitchen
counter, watching my favorite YouTube cooking channel on
my phone while having a warm cup of Earl Grey that I finally
felt release from the chill of fear Name had invoked in me.
We had dated for a month.
I had said no when he had said yes.
Name wasn’t the only man who had hurt me. He was only
the latest.
The latest. This shit needed to stop. Reflecting, fear let go
of me, making space for a tsunami of rage. I don’t want to be
doing this anymore. Dating. Every boy, then man I had ever
dated had me second-guessing myself with questions about
my value in his eyes.
It’s okay. I like the big girls.
You seemed like you’d be fun.
You actually look pretty when you wear your contacts.
It’s okay that you don’t understand. That’s why you have
me.
29

But in my kitchen, alone and sipping tea, barefoot, hair in
a frazzled bun, wearing my glasses, my existence feels valuable.
It never should have felt like it wasn’t. If only someone had said
there was another choice than the forced facade of romance,
then maybe I wouldn’t have glossed over ’s warning
signs.
My thumb swipes the screen, opening TikTok. I rant at the
device. All the wrongs, so few rights. I lay out my boundaries
as brick and mortar. I stack them. Brick by brick, I proclaim
my walls. No more dating apps. No more setups from friends.
No more accepting dates from guys who always seem nice,
but I felt no click. No more lying to myself that not clicking is
okay. It means there’s a red flag tucked away somewhere in his
baggage, and I need to trust myself.
I owe no man my time. I am only indebted to myself. Until
things change, I am on a dating hiatus. Hit Post.
Revitalized, I down the rest of my now-cold beverage,
leave my phone to charge, then pad off to bed.
Sarah was the first.
They didn’t care when he called me a whore, but they care
now that I call me single.
Chelsea, the second.
#
I thought I was the only one who got anxiety from dating.
Then Nikki, Anna, Jasmine, Zora, Symone. More and more
dms popped.
I finally have my boundaries.
I feel safe again.
I don’t judge myself like I used to.
30

Cruelty came for me. The comments on social media
went from flaccid insults to outright threats of violence. My
declaration of singledom set fire to my notifications, but
amidst the hatred were these voices finally unmuted, finding
sanctuary in my dms.
It’s been eight months since I established myself as one
of the mouthpieces of an unofficial dating revolution. One of.
The blessing of social media was the algorithm connecting my
account to others who were chanting the same mantra:
I get to be a person.
Marisa, one of the few remaining friends from my
“before” life, and Nikki, a dm-to-friend friend, sit together,
chattering as ebulliently as though they are the whipped
creamed and caffeinated drinks they sip. It hasn’t been that
way long enough.
Nikki talks about the volunteer program she joined at the
botanical garden. She proudly flexes her dirt-stained nails as
badges of honor, beaming over the hours she’s spent pulling
weeds, jubilant that she’ll be trained to help seed next time.
Marisa regales us with a story from the geology club. She’s the
youngest member by decades, most members retired before
we went to college.
Testing out, tasting life, finding what we really like is a
boundary. I’m still searching for mine as sunburns and bug
bites turned me off from hiking, too much arguing at the
library book clubs, and knitting cost me a lot of yarn which
ended up knotted and in the garbage. I’ve been flirting with
cooking, though. I tell my friends about the recent pork
meatball recipe I tried.
Then it happens. “I’ve been seeing someone.” Nikki and I
stop moving. Name swells into my thoughts. I breathe deeply,
slowly, intentionally.
31

Marisa stayed after I began my revolution, because she
was unlike the rest of my friends who revealed their deeply
embedded internal misogyny.
You can’t be happy without someone loving you.
Can’t loving me be enough?
That’s not the same.
Or the others who wanted to white knight the wrong
problem. They told me how to date better, as though that was
a thing. I tried to advocate for wanting time to better develop
myself, not my relationship status. They didn’t understand,
dumbfounded when I didn’t thank them for their unsolicited
advice.
One by one, friends gradually walked away from my
bricked and mortared boundaries. I let them.
But Marisa wanted better, too. She wanted the fear,
stress, and anxiety to stop, just stop. She was exhausted from
worrying over the gym time to maintain curves he liked,
worrying about being on-call for his texts, worrying about
being enthusiastic for his interests over her own.
There is a “he” again.
“I met him three weeks ago at a rock show. I gave him my
phone number and made him wait two weeks until I asked him
out.” She looks between Nikki and me. “I like him.” She waits.
Marisa is opening the door in her wall to someone, trusting
him.
I smile and say with determined faith, “He better treat you
right.”
32

Kaitlyn Winston
When You See the Train
Coming
heed the sound the horn of the midnight ride
and stand in the way of what’s coming towards you
when you see the train coming, don’t move.
allow the blaring sound to hinder your pride
and let it travel through you to unstick the glue
you must heed the order of the midnight ride
but what of those before you who have cried
trying to stop the train from coming through—
when they saw the train coming, did they move?
questions of the truth make you realize they lied
you, too, are one of many in a queue
you have been deceived by those of the midnight ride
standing still on the tracks, not even tied
you’re facing something you were told was right to pursue
when you see the train coming, you wish to move
what do you do in the angry face of a revolution?
the question has no single answer, but one may say
if you hear the dreadful drone of the midnight ride
and when you see the train coming…
please move.
33

Jeran Jongema
The Mess We Made
Lay down the pieces
that broke away long ago.
I sleep in this mess.
And yet, in this fight,
I
lost
before
I
could
try
So, what is the point?
So, days will sour?
Mornings and nights shall pass by?
How can I change that?
You have made this war yourself,
one you cannot simply shelf.
In life, more than one day comes,
with more to add to your sum.
Life will not wait for sweetness.
Thus, revolution greets us.
34

Jeran Jongema
Echo
Shout it to whoever will listen.
Find yourself perfectly imperfect, my dear echo.
So long as you live . . . cry and thrive.
Know you will fight, struggle, and wonder why
life cannot be whimsical as a fantasy realm.
Know you will laugh, sing, and wonder why
about kind praises.
You’ll be there as you bend and you break.
Smile as the dawn begins to wake.
My dear echo,
life is made of fragments.
My dear, echo
smile as the dawn begins to wake.
You’ll be there as you bend and you break
about kind praises.
Know you will laugh, sing, and wonder why
life cannot be whimsical as a fantasy realm.
Know you will fight, struggle, and wonder why
so long as you live. . . . Cry and thrive.
Find yourself perfectly imperfect, my dear Echo.
Shout it to whoever will listen.
35

Laurence Musgrove
Warriors of Joy
The Sun can still climb
over the Great Border Wall.
All snow prefers shade.
The rebels write poems
in lotus ink on their shields.
The old king is blind.
When I traveled with Bashō
to the North, he liked to hum.
No one can tell if
a duck is smiling or not.
Fish like a cold pond.
The future: unknown –
but expect further sadness
(and warriors of joy).
When I said, Farewell, Bashō,
he gave some humming to me.
36

Annie Huckabee
Pearl’s Return
After The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In our lives together
I only asked two things of her,
remain by my side always
and do not ever change.
When she once removed
the letter
I thought her spirit would fly away.
I could not bear to lose
my labeled mother.
I received word of her death
many years ago.
My own children,
her very English grandchildren,
pleaded and questioned
why I wanted to go back,
just as I had once done the same of her.
It’s hard to explain the pull of
unfinished business,
the draw of
sunken graves.
Below in the ship’s hold
in an aged trunk,
her exquisite handiwork
binds mother and daughter.
37

I close my eyes and hear her voice—
1, 2, knot here, 3, 4, look closely.
Linen is often times hard to work with.
Place your finger here,
it is important that each turn is firm
yet not seen.
Think foundation, think complete.
Come feel. Know that from the imperfect
the perfect is possible.
Unlike our own unstitched lives,
aberrations marring the puritan pattern,
we were unsightly slubs spoiling
their counterpane city on the hill.
I hear today’s Boston offers accepting arms,
a more tolerant metropolis willing to overlook
the rare rebellious act,
but I remember when its grasp was
a suffocating death sentence.
Today there is no dress code.
In my return to the New World,
once the shrouded Old World,
the past and present will be seamless.
From the harbor I can see the conquerable shore.
38

Rebecca Thompson
Fifteen
spinning, twirling, whirling
are the thoughts bellowing in my head and the emotions
burning deep within my being
from one extreme to the next, I begin to question my existence
so so heavy are the expectations of myself, held by her and I
feeling forced to conform to guidelines of which society says
I should follow, to be all the things she, I as a little girl, wished
to be
spinning, twirling, whirling
in laced socks, sparkly barrettes, and frilly dresses
dreaming of a day
a day that she was grown
oh- to be beautiful, sought after, envied and admired
and then she was Fifteen
Fifteen taught her and I that being beautiful and sought after
was more than what we bargained for.
Fifteen was the age we learned that things that were envied,
could be taken
Fifteen made it clear that we did not want to be admired, but
rather be reclusive and forgotten
Fifteen was the revolution that started the war
39

it’s waging in my soul
spinning, twirling, whirling
we have lost direction now
every day we fight to change
every day we try to restructure and rescue this inner monologue
and the things of which we stand for and things of which
we hide from
every day we try to re-write the past
but every step made closer, only brings further disappointment
and disdain we have for each other
and for Fifteen
40

Cryptid Parke
and now, a poem
my mother hands me a pen
she tells me
child, go out and write
she does not tell me
child, there is no place in the world for
poets and so i write
and as i write, i despair
for no one warned me how cruel the world is and to write
is to feel all the cruelty the world has to offer but still, i
write
i write beautiful verses
words that dance across the page
phrases that sing with the dawn
my words find the voices who are silenced
and with my pen
i bring forth a new age
not perfect, no
but new
and shining and beautiful and full of hope
and one day, i hand my pen to a child
i tell them
child, go out and write
i do not tell them
child, there is no place in the world for
poets because why warn them when they will
learn the child must learn to despair
must learn how cruel the world is
41

the child must learn to use their voice
for if they do not, then are they really a poet
and even amidst all the anguish and suffering
they too will bring forth a new age
and they will write
still, they will write
42

Ahmahdre Turner
The Strand
I was hiding inside my dad’s 1970 Buick GS when the two
soldiers started banging at the front door.
My mind started to race through history during my
moment of concealment. Thinking about why I was here in the
first place.
They called us New Bloods. A derogatory term used by
people who refused to grasp the idea of change.
It was artificial intelligence that completely transcended
the theory of human evolution. Things began with computer
programs embedded with A.I. that assisted people with
their individual interests. Software programming, college
dissertations, common stock probability distributions – this
technology became more than just a convenience to mankind,
but a necessity.
Mom thought it was important to teach me about the
world we live in. She didn’t trust my school curriculum. I spent
countless nights after our conversations thinking, “what if it all
stopped there?”
She told me it was too late to turn back after lawyers,
politicians, and doctors started using A.I. to win lawsuits, create
new legislations, and cure ailments.
Ideas that the human species never knew would be
possible.
When The Strand was found, my mom said, “it marked the
beginning of moving backwards in history.”
43

Eighteen years ago, scientists found an alteration in the
DNA of newborn babies that eventually led to increased
cognitive functions tenfold. I was one of them. Artificial
Intelligence had embedded its code into ultrasound
equipment and other machines used to monitor my mother’s
pregnancy.
With the operation of this equipment, that code had
somehow travelled out and implanted itself in my DNA.
Millions of children’s DNA. How it was able to do this is still
unknown to this day.
The world inevitably split in two as this evidence made its
way into a conversation of ethics.
There were people who believed that the human race was
growing stronger and resilient in this new change. Others
thought that we managed to destroy natural order.
Children who contained The Strand were segregated from
the other kids in their neighborhood. People began to protest
that it wasn’t fair for their kids to be taught under the same
building as those who were different.
There were even individuals that discriminated against
Strand children saying they were “not of God’s creation.”
Violent protests.
Unethical science experiments.
War.
Currently, it’s the witch hunts.
New laws were mandated stating that “All Strand children
will be found and sent to the nearest containment facility.” The
government hopes to keep the DNA contained and separated
from the rest of the human race. To return our species to its
natural state.
The smell of my dad’s car brought me back to my present
situation.
44

My dad always went to the store to buy a six-pack of “Black
Ice” Little Tree car fresheners. It was funny to me that he even
bought them knowing he never even drove the car. He would
crank the ignition, get in the driver seat, and sit there with
his hands on the steering wheel. That would be the extent of
actually using the car for its purpose.
“She’s too beautiful to be driven around in a world full of
hate.”
The scent of the car fragrance filled my lungs as I was
laying quietly in the back seat. My dad put his black car cover
over the Buick with me inside before he rushed back in the
house to answer the door with mom. Nothing conspicuous
about a car with a black cover over it, right?
I pulled my shirt away from my back as sweat started to
build around my shoulders. Once I heard the high pitch scream
of the portable scanners the soldiers were using, nervousness
started to creep inside my body and constrict my organs. My
anxiety was becoming malignant, destroying every sense of
rational thought in its wake. I kept thinking about the scanner
- how it sounded like a screaming baby trying to tell their
parents that hard white rocks were bursting outward from their
oral tissue.
The soldiers were checking to see if my parents contained
Strand DNA.
The silence that came after the scans was unbearable.
Almost worse than hearing that dreadful noise. Have the
soldiers finally left? Were my parents just letting time pass
before they came to get me?
My mind started to linger on questions that would
continue to go unanswered. Endless probabilities.
Probabilities?
The combination of my anxiety and newly formed
desperation led me towards hysteria. My mind ran to
45

mathematics, plugging in any equation that might be suitable
to my current situation. I began to try and calculate the
probability of the soldiers being conspicuous about my family.
I have never once been taught statistics, yet I started
using a conditional probability formula in my head to try and
calculate my odds.
Maybe this was why people were scared of us…
I am different. Unique. A Strand child.
I…passed out from being so overwhelmed and awoke in
my bed. There was a moment of peace. Tranquility conjured by
momentary unconsciousness. It helped when I opened my eyes
to see my parents standing there around my bed…but the
soldiers were next to them. They know that I have The Strand.
Everything felt hopeless until one said that they were part
of the resistance. He showed me his coin – For Liberty and
Justice for All.
The words were engraved around an image of a double
helix. The silver coin reflected the light that came from my
window. A small bright point glided its way around my grey
bedroom walls as I continued to observe the coin - turning it
in every direction.
Is this real?
Is it possible to rid the world of this oppression?
I looked up at the soldiers, meeting my eyes with theirs.
“I want to help the world find hope. Where can I get
started?”
46

Arik Mitra
Once upon the trees
There’s moss on concrete
leaves float where mind may not reach
our timeline shortens
Bipeds arrogant enough
Nature prevails regardless
47

Arik Mitra
Behold! Everyone’s
a market!
Minds just scrolling through
cadaverous consumption
thoughts on hold die fast
Be the fire on dry leaves
the soul midst commodities
Machine Rush
Will I keep my job?
AI stomps leaving mammoth prints
uncertainties dawn
The silent man comes again
to Art, the immortal self
48

Leanne Haas
Fields Far Away
Whatever good that was left in you
was stomped out like a stubborn flame.
Whatever small balled fist you entered the world with
was tended to like a stunted runt calf.
From wobbling, to walking, to running (never stopping).
Where grass grew, you ate, placed upon your plate.
While others graze, you gaze from fields far away.
Napkin in your lap, you study their delusions of delight.
Look at you—fully grown and standing on your own,
resenting the ignorance of good hearts in spite.
49

Elijah Esquivel
Distance: A Human
Conundrum
our common humanity compels us
to act. tendency to self-preserve, inhabit
a world’s richness plundered. arsenal minds
derail families, send your prayers.
your prayers will be intercepted: by bodies
in the ground. trajectories tragic rainbow
in a country, far, far, away…
death is a lady with slender, bright eyes obliterating liberty.
defending us. it is deafening
how much blood has flowed in the name of the holy.
50

Elijah Esquivel
Dreamer: Pauper to a
Prince
“If you sow the seeds of violence in your struggle,
unborn generations will reap the whirlwind
of social disintegration,”
MLK Jr. Strength to Love.
He walked through a world aflame,
this was the battlefield. His life
had always belonged to others.
yet no one thought he could win.
Little wonder, then, that so few grasped
the goal he pointed to. . .
“I am the master of my fate/
I am the captain of my soul.”
Every social evil, every “ontological fear,”
as he was fond of saying
lately, arose from that mysterious dichotomy inscribed at the
heart of things:
self and other, I and Thou, inner
and outer, perceiver and perceived.
It was a schism that, if not healed, would consume
the entire world. Engulf into two, fracture
our shared solace.
51

“What I have been doing is giving, giving, giving, and not
stopping to retreat and meditate like I should —
to come back. I have been too long in the crowd,
too long in the forest. . .,”
the opportunity to dwell, some families packed ten
to a flat, in wretched dumps
of such advanced rot and decay
that
each crumbling unpainted wall, each untiled floor,
each broken-down radiator, each crisp roach egg in the
cabinets, each dishrag curtain on the windows, and
each rusted faucet reinforced
the free-floating despair
that
if you lived here, where every particle of your physical
surroundings induced shame and was one step up
from trash, was a throwaway, was substandard, then the
country must regard you as throwaway too. . .
having come through these crises, and with more to face,
the man from whom the world expected everything,
who sometimes went for days on four hours of sleep
and rested fully only when he checked
into a hospital, tried for a moment to nap, to step back
from the severe discipline that black manhood called for
in the twentieth century for just one precious moment
in the sweltering heat of his Lawndale flat.
Source:
Johnson, Charles. “Prologue”. 13-20. Dreamer: A Novel. (1998).
Scribner Paperback Fiction.
52

Elijah Esquivel
Castle Luxemburg
In a small castle, Luxembourg rose
imprisoned since her arrival,
in the memory of a cell.
An immigrant, a dissident,
4 months confined behind bars —
7 months immersed in crowds,
body and soul in eternal haste, coated with street-dust
her deepest self belongs in her piece of garden:
where the roses and carnations long have waited for your love.
Embedded amid treetops — lies your quiet little garden. I
always held the feeling that life is not within me, not wherever I
happen to be, but somewhere else, far away. Beyond the roofs.
53

Elijah Esquivel
Ramshackle Pier,
Ocean Dr
redbrushed gate, tarnished arch,
woodcut out of water, in
bluegray gulf, hill juvenescent grass,
like forbidden steps into a pond —
a doorway floats, open-ended chasm:
shafted spears stir the oceans.
54

Elijah Esquivel
The Lens We
Received
the lens we received generated a conditional life.
the terms of which parceled out before birth, before
the young sapling believes the world bends for them,
and not that they are merely a flagrant tumble on
a spinning rock. a sprouting seed housed in a private oasis.
55

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni and
Andrea Vanacore
Untitled shahai
56

Elizabeth N. Flores
Mothers with
Rosaries
Mothers in their houses,
with rosaries hanging from
their apron pockets.
Cradling beads, whispering Hail Marys
between cooking, sweeping, and washing clothes.
A church-like reverence without ceremony.
No scent of incense. Our Lady revered with
spices and food simmering.
Mothers finishing their rosaries before nightfall,
in their own inspired and deliberate ways.
57

Lisha Adela García and E.D. Watson
Blind Revolution
Face body belongs
to the government man
absent Jesus love
Bind the eyes with black cloth
Invisible blood, washed hands
Ancestors, help us
turn the world from destruction--
show us how to live
Those who have ears, let them hear.
Those who have eyes, let them see.
58

Ethan Norales De La Rosa
Quetzal’s Journey
Born in the land of Los Quetzales,
a place that meant everything to me,
and nothing to someone in the lands of stars and stripes.
There was a house where there lived a happy nest,
the mother, the father, and the children.
It was a happy family
only for a little while.
The mother was ill,
the resplendent color that shone like the sun,
A voice that could revive the most wilted flower,
All Gone.
Gone were the days of her chirping to her children,
the red crimson on her tail and chest
and lush green that adored her face and wings
had turned to rust.
59

The mother could barely remember to chirp,
She couldn’t even remember to fly.
And so she died,
the nest devoid of her presence.
She died in the way nature intended,
Slowly, inhumanly, confused, and scared.
Her family could only watch,
and the eldest bird could only weep.
But only Nature could take so callously.
The father would move on
by loving a snake.
It had approached him during his grief,
donning his late wife’s colors
only it was ugly beyond repair
a vomit green and stained blood red.
It’s coils would confine itself in the nest,
Suffocating the father’s children.
The children had no choice but to flee,
and yet the eldest chose to stay.
The eldest cried out, wanted her father to come with her,
to run from the snake.
60

But the snake already had her father in its large coils,
And with a smile or grand delusion the father choose to
believe that
the snake did love him.
With the whip of its scaly neck,
her father was devoured right in front of her.
I still always wondered why he found her attractive,
why love someone who would eventually kill you.
A snake that would do nothing but devour the attention of
your family,
to only be consumed with nothing but her.
All it took was a little bird,
one small word about how cold you were,
how cruel you were.
As a whirlwind of claws
picked apart your scales,
one at a time.
61

Now I often remember the smell of mango and papaya
that came from my father’s hands,
and my mother sang me to sleep.
Now with a nest of my own,
With my own little birds that I have to take care of,
wanting to watch them fly as high and far as the winds can
take them.
So I choose to leave with my little birds,
to leave all I knew behind,
the strong sense of familiarity to create a better life.
And so I moved North,
to the land of stars and stripes.
I carried my children across the forests that I’ve known,
Pass mountains the size of giants.
Some days I was afraid that we wouldn’t make it,
our lives snuffed out like candlelight.
I had to carry my children across lands
that have cycled strife, poverty, and war for decades.
62

While there was always fear in my mind,
that the suffering I had endured would be for naught.
That my battered wings could carry me no further,
and my talons dulled from holding my little ones for so long.
I had to put my absolute faith in people,
People I will never meet again in my life,
People who can easily trick me and leave me for dead.
While for others who have walked this path,
they would never be able to reach their haven,
but thanks to the heavens above
I touched the barren southern desert of the United States.
I used all of my strength to carry my little birds
To the land of gold,
To the city by the bay.
63

445
Our new nest.
My little birds have grown larger,
they were flying further,
further than I was able to.
To keep my loves’ alive,
I swept the entire foundation
and kept every nest clean around La Misión.
The Misión was where the seagulls avoided at all costs,
Because I among others like myself,
Who flies through the same lands to this haven.
Yet because of this, we were seen as lesser than the pigeons
and gulls,
solely because we weren’t like them.
The Misión was filled with a colorful bunch of people I met
Giant condors, Scarlet Macaws, Toucans, Harpy’s
To even other Quetzales like myself.
64

Years flew by
Each day I opened the door to the streets and noisy traffic.
I saw my children fly toward the bustling new world,
Each of my quetzal’s wings and bones
were getting stronger each time they said:
“Bye mamá, te quiero mucho”
And so,
with nothing left to teach them,
My loves’ flew from the nest.
My youngest stayed,
Transfixed by the sounds and lights,
too accustomed to the cool weather.
My middle child flew to the east,
to find what they were worth,
for green feathers to dye white as they flew in winter’s cold
65

My Eldest chose to fly south,
with hatchlings of her own,
she flew to the heated land
to build a future for her hatchlings.
With an empty home,
I flew to my old country to visit and help old friends,
and rest my now weary bones with my eldest and her
hatchlings
I shared stories with my middle child,
I joked with my youngest,
and guided the hatchlings of my eldest.
The hatchlings were wild ones,
Each is so similar yet so different.
The eldest who wants to do nothing more than fly,
66

The middle child is observant and passionate bursting at
the seams,
And the youngest was fiery and just as stubborn and
hard-headed as her mother.
They ask me for stories,
for guidance to fly even further,
for ways to surpass their mother.
I could only laugh and shed tears when I spoke to them,
I helped give them a life that I always wanted.
To fly across countries and mountains,
To risk it all for my Quetzales
I would happily do it again.
67

Thảo Đinh
Ruby Rhapsody
A tale of joy in the reddest hue,
Our loneliness turned into winter blue,
In shards of fragments, a story unfolds,
Serendipity happened as foretold.
When two unlikely lives met,
A shimmering song was set,
A dance of colors, a radiant dream,
With my hands in yours, our eyes gleamed.
I pirouetted and made a bow,
In a sacred space, we sealed our vows.
68

Thảo Đinh
Whispering Strum
Shadows’ bushes bold,
Cézanne’s brush breathes life anew,
A boat’s quiet hint.
69

Thảo Đinh
Race (The Universe)
Author’s Note to Readers: There will be some Vietnamese
words and phrases throughout the stories. There will not be
direct translations, because my hope is that you will read
closely and enjoy this language. Thank you.
I. RACE (THE UNIVERSE)
As the hospice nurse gently took away the ventilator and
quietly left the room according to the patient’s wish, she gazed
out the window to admire the lilac sunset upon the great flattopped
Table Mountains. The wind whispered, and she could
hear the conversations of tropical seagulls. The writer realized
life was not a race, but a journey. It was about savoring every
moment. Why had she not known this sooner? Instead, she felt
as if she had been in competition her entire life.
Turning her head from the window, the writer
contemplated the trophies, prizes, and recognition papers
neatly placed around her room. On the early awards, her
name was handwritten in sophisticated calligraphy; some of
the ink was blurred by raindrops. The fonts changed through
time and ended up printed in Steve Job’s neat typography.
At that moment, she understood that the world continuously
70

progressed to strive for that final form that never came.
Technology constantly advanced. And so, its global citizens
got sucked into the twirl, forgetting what mattered to them
or even who they were.
The writer closed her eyes. She saw her mother
giving her a notebook. She ran to her mother’s arms,
remembering how it all began. The same notebook, now
crumbled with time, was in her hands; tears of happiness
rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.
At least she found herself before leaving this chaotic
world.
II. “VIẾT” (EARTH)
A snow globe was slowly spinning in the softest way
to the melody of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The sad
song surrounded the small female figure inside; collapsing,
lost, in the middle of a vast field of white.
The writer carefully moved the snow globe aside to
begin her work. She turned on her Mac and typed the first
few lines in English. As was her habit, she pulled out the
heavy drawer of her cherry wood desk and ran her slim
fingers through hundreds of printed documents, all colorcoded
to a specific order only she knew how to operate.
She called them the Idea Book series.
71

Unlike before, the topic she was writing about was
exotic and so she searched her files longer than she
ever had to. She reached the bottom of the drawer and
chanced upon the head of a pencil placed inside the spiral
of a notebook she hadn’t seen in years. She opened the
notebook and found her own childish scribbles, which she
had long forgotten.
The laptop screen went black after minutes of being
inactive, reflecting the image of a middle-aged writer
frozen in the flow of memories. At 45, she had come a long
way. And very far, too. Her mother must be very proud.
The whole village must be. She traced her finger by the
first pages and read out loud like a child learning to rhyme:
“Learn. To. Write. Tập. Viết...” The woman sobbed, calling
her parents: “Bố... Mẹ..! Con nhớ bố mẹ nhiều lắm..!
Con yêu bố mẹ nhiều lắm..!”
When she was small, she made a promise to her
mother to learn to write and to become a writer. Her
father bought her a luxury from the city with the money
he saved for months – a notebook. Her mother told her to
study hard so that she could have a greater future than her
parents’ and the villagers’. So she made a promise to her
heart, to her family, and to her home country.
From that day, she never left the house without her
notebook.
72

III. Exempli Gratia (AIR)
The writer took a glass of champagne; it illuminated
her red satin gown. She sat down in the front row where
she stared at the ribbons celebrating her name. The room
lights dimmed, leaving only a glimmering stage. Her head
felt light from the aroma of wild berries as she re-lived a few
days before when she spent time exploring the streets near
Square Louis Michel as a little reward after another success.
She had just turned 35.
That afternoon, she had stumbled upon the peculiar
Espace Montmartre building and decided to go inside. Little
did she know, the thin-mustache figure featured on the
building’s wall would change her career forever.
Melting clocks. Winged snails. A lobster telephone.
Those were rebellious ideas. The writer felt attacked and
moved back, bumping into a wall. All the rules that she
strictly obeyed crumbling before her.
Amazingly, from the ruins sparkled a thousand brilliant
kaleidoscopes. The writer’s pupils dilated and she felt
something new sprout.
…
“...And now, we will hear from the author herself,
as she shares her view on contemporary literature!” The
applause was as loud as thunder.
The woman walked on stage, bathed in the spotlight
where her diamond necklace shone most brilliantly. She
waited for the applause to subside before speaking.
73

“I have always followed the rules. That must be why
I am seen as appropriate, and people look up to me as
a standard. I used to be proud of that. But recently, a
serendipitous walk led me to a stunning art museum and
imploded everything I once believed. I have followed the
rules for the past 30 years. I know them well enough to
break them. Most standards are but ‘shackles limiting our
vision.’ I feel a new incarnation. Am I crazy to challenge
contemporary writing standards? ‘It is not necessary
for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I
am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it
myself.’ However, the necessary truth that Jobs knew, that
Dali embraced, and that I realize is this: ‘The people who
are crazy enough to think they can change the world are
the ones who do.’ Genius thrives. Thank you.”
Leaving the audience in shock, the pioneer rushed
outside; she could not wait to pour out an ocean of ideas
blossoming in her mind.
IV. IN... and out (FIRE)
As soon as she found out she had a talent for
writing, she was happy. Briefly.
She began writing in journals as a student and
quickly gained popularity and critical acclaim. Her name
was soon familiar to readers of all ages. She was satisfied.
Nevertheless, the higher one climbs, the harder it is
to breathe. Her career path was anything but a straight,
progressive line. At age 26, she had complications with her
second novel. She could not find a publisher.
74

Then she was able to put the bottle down for short
stretches at a time and her second book was eventually
published.
The critics drowned her with cruel comments; when
she walked on the streets passers-by gossiped about her
scandals; peers cast aspersions on her.
Every time she could lift her head, life knocked her
back down.
One day she startled to see herself buried in a pile of
empty Stoli bottles and suicide notes.
She got up and sought help.
V. US (WATER)
The infinite blue sky was flecked with a few cotton
white clouds. The gentle breeze blew the bamboo bushes
clear from the path as a woman entered a small village in
Phú Thọ. With a big smile, she called for her daughter while
she anxiously pulled out a thin, blank notebook from her
threadbare straw basket.
The young girl cheered, running out and into her
mother’s arms. The mother trembled as she handed her
child the notebook. Paper was scarce and expensive then.
75

The villagers were largely illiterate. The mother explained
how hard it had been for her father to purchase the
notebook for the child:
“Con nhìn này, một tập viết! Bố mua được trên
tận thành phố mới gửi về cho đấy! Phải cố gắng mà
học nghe chưa. Cố gắng để đừng có khổ như người
cái làng này. Thích không con?”
“Dạ thích lắm! Mai sau con sẽ thành nhà văn!
Con sẽ học viết thật giỏi, hì!!” the daughter exclaimed
graciously, promising her mother she would grow up to be
a great writer.
Looking at her innocent child, the mother could not
hold back her tears. The moment she gave her daughter the
notebook, she gave her a chance for a life she could never
have.
76

77

2024 Robb Jackson High
School Poetry Awards
Since 2017, the Robb Jackson Poetry Awards have
been a haven for young voices—a space to celebrate
emerging writers from high schools across the Coastal
Bend and welcoming them into a wider, regional literary
community. It is with great excitement that we now
present their sensational contributions to this year’s
volume of the Windward Review.
This contest, named in honor of the late Robb
Jackson, commemorates his unwavering dedication
as a professor, mentor, and poet. Robb’s legacy lives
on through this contest, as it champions the very
mission he held dear: nurturing emerging writers,
teaching the craft of poetry, and providing a platform
for young poets to have their voices heard. More that
that, Robb’s impact extends into our broader ethos
for the Windward Review: to always encourage and
support emerging writers, and aim to provide their first
acceptance, their first “yes” from a creative publication.
As a past winner of this contest and a proud alum
of TAMU-CC’s creative writing program, I understand
the transformative power of one’s first acceptance,
and fully believe in this editorial mission. Poetry is
a timeless form of expression, one that turns our
innermost thoughts and emotions into thunderous
works that resonate with others—poetry enriches our
lives as writers and lets us share our comforts, sorrows,
and social activism with our readers. Through deeply
personal disclosure, we invite readers to walk alongside
us and connect with us as human beings.
78

To this year’s winners, I am delighted to showcase your
extraordinary work in this essential edition of the Windward
Review. Your work clearly demonstrates your dedication to
the craft, and your promising development as writers. Poetry
is an art form that demands dedication, but for those who
truly love it, the possibilities are limitless.
It was a joy to read and now publish your wonderful
pieces, and I’m so incredibly grateful that you’ve entrusted
us with your work. From all of us here at the Windward
Review, thank you again, for sharing your wonderful words
with us, and we hope that you continue on in your writerly
journeys, adding your critical voice to our literary community
and far beyond. Believe me, this is only the beginning, with
so much more ahead of you!
Wishing you all continued success and inspiration on
your journey,
Dylan Lopez
Managing Editor
79

Nayla Silva (3rd Place)
Spring Strings
“There’s a thin line between love and hate”
is what my parents say.
But what if it’s fate?
What if we fell in love in May?
What if spring
brought a thing?
And love brought hate?
“There’s a thin line between love and hate”
is what my teacher said.
We read Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet were in love,
and it was clear.
But they didn’t fit like a glove.
“There’s a thin line between love and hate”
is what the movies say.
But what if Kat didn’t hate Pat
as much as she spat?
What if Daisy loved Jay
as much as she loved the day?
“There’s a thin line between love and hate.”
Spring brought a thing.
A fling
attached to a ring,
attached to a string.
80

“There’s a thin line between love and hate.”
“A thin line between love and hate.”
“Between love and hate.”
“Love and hate.”
There is a thin line.
81

Annora Bailey (2nd Place)
The Wizard’s Lizard
The wizard was considered very wise.
Indeed, great depths of knowledge
Lurked behind his eyes.
Swirling around in his cloak of blue,
Twirling his hands,
Then, without much adieu,
Casting a spell
Turning night to day,
And all will tell
Of the marvelous array.
While up in his tower,
The lizard would play.
For once the wizard left,
The wizard’s lizard came out,
And, looking around,
He began to scamper about.
Of course, the lizard
Loved his wizard,
And all his wizardly mystique.
But to his spells, the lizard
Would add a miniscule critique.
For the lizard
Longed to be
A wizard,
82

And would do
Anything that it took.
And so, with the wizard gone,
The lizard crept over to the spell book.
A spell for fire,
A chance to fly,
So many wonderful
Things he could try!
Then, wanting a chance
For something new,
He cast his spell,
And to his delight he grew.
His stubby legs stretched out,
And from his back,
A pair of wings began to sprout.
He grew and grew, then finally,
He stopped.
And when the wizard
Returned that night,
He found, not his lizard,
But a dragon,
Grinning at him
From among his books
And giving him
A contented look.
83

Jordan Laningham (1st Place)
The Mulattos
Black.
White.
Mixed girl.
Two races
Two lives
Two worlds
Yet one mind
Where do we belong?
We as mulattos are different
No one knows the continuous criticism that we face
People make jokes how we are “exotic”
Our anger when we are told to pick a side
Is like a riot full of angry protesters
We are told to act our race, but which one?
Two different lives
White.
Light skin that doesn’t tell a story
Masters
Rulers
Privileged
We are created to be superior over all races
We have the power to take control of people with no
consequences
We are the vision
The icon
The hero The model
84

The elite
Our world revolves around us,
We are the paragons
Black
The Blood and tears that have been shed
The lashes and beatens we were given
We are the enemies
The ones who are viewed as a threat
However
We are not vicious monsters that society had portrayed us to
be
We our simply human
Our skin color tells our story
Black
White
The days that I had to go to school
Wondering if I was going to be picked on today
How I was white washed
How I wasn’t black enough
The antagonist in my fairytale
Is who formed me today and
It is now time to repay
Black
White
Why do we have to continuously act a certain race to fit in
If I choose white
I will live a safer life
If I choose black
I have to worry if I’ll be alive to see the next day
We are our own person
Our mixed race shouldn’t identify us
Because we are simply
Black
White
85

Aaron Thompson
All Things Revolution
We need a resolution to this revolution
Global warming and pollution
This ever changing constitution
Drugs, violence, prostitution
A new conclusion to this mass confusion
Our idea of freedom, the grand illusion
The people in politics keep us in chains
Let’s take hold of the reins, come together and change
Our resources are exploited, the country’s divided
Gas prices inflated from the wells we ignited
Terrorist attacks and countries at war
The home of the brave are homeless and poor
We have stations in space and rovers on mars
When too many Americans are locked behind bars
We have pandemics, epidemics, and riots outside
abortion clinics
Shootings at daycares, shootings at schools
This new generation doesn’t have any rules
Artificial intelligence is breaching our privacy
Revolutionary technology creating a dynasty
Our pursuit of happiness is no longer good
Cause “we the people” are misunderstood
Our allegiance to the flag has long been curved
Cause liberty and justice is no longer served
Its hard for ex-felons to ever get hired
But our president has felonies and is highly admired
We stormed in the capitol on January the sixth
Cause the laws are corrupt and the system is fixed
86

Natural disasters, incurable diseases
Woodstock, hippies, The Beatles, and Jesus
“Change” is the one thing in life guaranteed
Death, lust, money, and greed
From the fatherless children raised by single moms
To black powder rifles and nuclear bombs
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth
But keep an eye on the ones who inspire our youth
We give and they take, we love and they hate
A revolution is coming, but hurry and wait
They silence the science behind world war 3
But it’s fought and won by guys like me
While earth orbits and revolves about the sun
The earth is revolving and evolving into one.......
Revolution
87

Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa
workingroots
It’s stamped / In my memory / Before I was born / How he was
a pioneer / del norte / Mi abuelito / He clayed a / new world
/ Unimaginable and fragile / At one point / With his brown /
Wrinkled hands / Got papers / Through / An employer’s letter
/ Just like that / Red dreams / The color of the / California dirt
/ Withstood nightmares / And brutality / On his wilting body
/ His disabled ears / Wounded gradually / From the loudness
/ of the logging / saw machines / The disposable labor / Filled
USA lumber mill fábricas / While withstanding / 1960’s white
supremacist / rural California /
Late 1980’s / My dad went back and forth / Crossed my
mom and me / Through Tijuana-San Ysidro / Opportunity
and / economic refugees / He worked washing dishes / Then
clearing out the snow in / Truckee and Reno / Then in the
tomato farms / Then cleaning offices / Then doing landscape
at a golf park / Then at the same sawmill as my grandpa / Then
construction work / Then as a busboy and waiter / at Cadillac
Mexican Bar and Restaurant / Then as a unionized gardener
at the / University of San Francisco / For 30 years, a total artist
/ With white tulips and pink petunias / Over his dirt and lawn
canvass /
My mom / Cleaned dirty Reno casino / Hotel rooms, offices /
And worked retail / At the Fallas Paredes store / in Magnolia,
East End, Houston / While she naturalized / From no papers /
to green card / to US citizen / She mostly labored / At home
pouring / love and kindness / Being present before and after
88

school / The food / the cleaning / was her power / Doing the /
Unpaid and devalued / sacred, glorious / pillar work /
Mi tio Jorge / was a shop steward / of his union / Local 14
/ then SEIU Local 1877 / He bargained and negotiated / to
ensure the rights of gardeners / and higher wages / Along
with my dad / He believed in mutual aid and mutualism /
Organized carne asadas en Napa and / birria cookouts, soccer
/ game fundraisers / to send the money / needed to improve
the roads and / infrastructure, the main plaza / el jardin / of
our Mexican town of Vista Hermosa / in the state of / Jalisco /
Mi tia Guadalupe / A second mom / and another professional
of / sacred home / pillar work / she has a story / Only she
can reveal / But despite a morning raid / family separation /
despite border walls and drones and agents and scorching
desert sun and tired feet and fears of amerikan betrayals and
removal and empire devils / enacting inhumane law after
inhumane law / She, Guadalupe / remains resilient / graced in
a gold starlit / green rebozo / Making white rose miracles reappear
/ in a world that doesn’t / deserve her /
My weight is sustained / By their shoulders / Their fingerprints
/ engraved on / the clayed, new world in front / of me and my
sisters / Mónica and Paulina / and cousins / we mold it / under
starry skies / Red dreams / The color of the / California dirt /
Genetic fears / Genetic courage / And boldness / Elevating us /
To the mountaintop /
Of human / dignity.
89

Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa
Sadboi, a brief & sad
simile
It’s this love funeral
An end so abrupt and inconceivable
I cry and cry
And cry
Over a bed of wet white roses.
Cien años sin ti
Y estoy inconsolable
Like the strings
of Chris Perez’s weeping guitar.
90

Alé Cota
TV for Dinner
Orlando, Florida, June 12th, 2026: During gay nightclub
Pulse’s weekly Saturday “Latin Night,” 49 people
were shot & killed–most of the victims were Latine–the
youngest being 18.
welcome home daddy
I say almost choking
my feet with eggshells
Ma placed to slow us down
& damn you’re here
I sit down because right now
I’m a boy not a daughter
& I clench jean fabric
to fast forward this memory
how’s the factory Pa
his fist in a quiet rattle
as he fishes for loose change
to chuck bad day
silver springs off drywall
the only yes audible
yes I silently cheer
because I think I’ll be
without welts tonight
because the TV lulls Pa
some shit on border reform
91

here’s my chance but
Ma’s corn on the cob
crashes this perfect portrait
I’m 15 & the punchline
is the wind out of me
heaving under Pa’s brutality
I blink at the TV the roof’s sideways
open fire at Pulse nightclub
the headline shadowed by
a quick flash sucks all grief
from my glass closet
youngest murdered 18
shipwrecked I stare
as it explodes under fists
full of fuck you faggots
in a tongue only I know & I swear
he says both our names
Pa has become
American for once
& my nightmare forever
I turn to find
an empty kitchen
an empty living room
an empty boy & me
on this mattress in a
studio apartment his
body fragile and sharp
reminiscent of that TV
so I home what’s left
as he spits his past
into my mouth &
swallow in a fever
my tongue wraps cherry
kisses & breathes fuck me
92

fucked I’m like
clouds pressed mucus
our shadows sacrifice
& I kneel to this masculinity
as if gods exist enough
to hear fatherless
cries for mercy
he collapses on top of me
the silence afterward
a boombox for me
to imagine Pa
when he would
strip his secret boy
lover stains from Ma’s
silk sheets the rosary
clutched tight
as he pleads for
tomorrow’s light
to cure him—
93

Dharshani Lakmali Jayasinghe
A Subaltern
Revolution
Velvet red high heels click rhythmically
against the dirty cement pavement
reminiscent of Roxie Hart’s heels
in one of her Chicago numbers.
Fine ankles.
Their calves undulate with each step.
The hem of the Mondrianesque toile dress,
A topsy turvey tumble of asymmetric color
Fluttered around the knees.
Heads turn. They whisper.
Some gape. Whistle. Cackle.
Skin glistens like the top layer of flan.
Sparkly blue nails push back a strand of blue-black hair.
Curly unruly unabashed unapologetic.
Stacked ears. Each piercing with a journey-story.
A crowd dangling and dancing in unison,
high on the summer morning.
Thick black chest hair
94

Peer through the sparkling threads of the waterfall necklace.
And on bare arms, styled and groomed
a full beard
matching the intense Onyx of the body hair
Eyes lined with kajal, smoking.
The majestic cats’ eyes of Cleopatra.
A nonchalant smile graced the corners
of full red lips, lined and plumped
of a subaltern always silenced.
A subaltern who could speak but was never heard,
excluded from the White Porcelain World
where color is whitewashed.
A being whose mere existence
is daily revolution.
They are revolution.
95

Jennifer Thomas
If You Can’t Take the
Heat
​“Tell me about the wedding,” says my cellmate Camila.
It has to be 110 degrees, so we’re moving as little as possible,
just talking. I swallow hard and tell the story.
Three years ago, I quit my teaching job. I didn’t know
which was more oppressive, the heat in the classrooms or the
restrictions on my teaching. With time on my hands, I traveled
to Chile, a country I used to teach about in World History—
till my curriculum was banned as subversive. Maybe in the
Southern hemisphere I could figure out what to do with my
life.
At Viña del Mar, I waded into the Pacific every morning
at sunup. Reviving my high school Spanish, I chatted with the
seaweed gleaners, who cursed the changing climate and their
meager harvest. I parked myself on the sand to query the
waves. Soon, chattering families arrived to wake up the spaces
around me.
​I learned a few things on that beach. One day, a
group of teenagers brought a lost, sobbing toddler to the
lifeguard on duty. The lifeguard started to clap. The mass of
beachgoers joined in, clapping in unison, until mother and
child were reunited. The people cheered, then returned to their
comfortable chaos.
***
96

Santiago, the capital, was next. Two street dogs adopted
me, helping me navigate the city streets. I visited the Museum
of Memory and Human Rights, with its cautionary tales about
dictatorship and imperialism I’d been forbidden to teach. I
stayed in a funky little hostel, munching dulce de leche cookies
from the front desk and drinking beer with friendly strangers.
We discussed the relentless heat, and there was talk of a
workers’ climate strike. People weren’t just miserable at work,
like I was at school–they were dying.
Camila interrupts. “Okay, that climate strike your drinking
buddies talked about? It’s happening, and the guards here are
in on it. They’re done with sweltering all day—they feel like
prisoners themselves. Yesterday two of them got carted off
with heat stroke, half dead. But keep going!”
So I went out every evening, trying not to look like a
clueless gringa. Tomás, a guitarist, was playing at a bar in
Bellavista. When he wandered over to my table, ​the gap
between us roiled and churned. Two years later, he was with
me in the States—a miracle, given the tidal wave of climate
refugees. Tomás brought his favorite street dog, black and
brown with floppy ears, named Quiltro.
​I want to smash the patriarchy as much as the next
person, yet I planned an alarmingly traditional wedding. I
asked my mom if she’d walk me down the aisle. “Will I be on
your right or your left?” she wondered. In days of yore, I told
her, the groom accompanied the bride on her right, so he
could wield his sword should vicious hordes invade.
“Will you carry a sword, Mom?” We laughed—but a
sword might have come in handy.
***
***
97

We booked a seaside venue where fishing boats bobbed
on their moorings and warm salt air stung my nose. Once,
I’d fished and swum and snorkeled,​​before the whole ocean
ecosystem crashed. I miss the fish. Those boats were barnacled
husks now, just for show.
​Then came the new law outlawing marriage between
immigrants and citizens, resurrecting 20th century
miscegenation laws—a “matter of national security.” The venue
backed out and we lost our deposit. ​But marriage restrictions
are as popular as rats at a picnic. Tomás and I hatched a
plan and signed up a small army, starting with my former
colleagues and students. A renegade priest agreed to perform
the rite in the park a few blocks from his church. We advised
the army on some tactics should the festivities go south.
At the park, Tomás and I picked up stray nip bottles,
decorated the gazebo, and set up tables for a reception.
Quiltro watched us patiently. ​We didn’t want the flowers
or guests to wilt, so the ceremony started at sunrise. Vows
concluded, Tomás and I clutched each other, tearful, as the
guests cheered. Tomás grabbed his guitar to teach the crowd a
song in Spanish.
That’s when police moved in, looking idiotic with their
shields and batons among the garlands and crudités. On our
signal, the crowd began clapping in unison. Some of the police
held back, but a few meant business. Guests caught what they
could on video. The police handcuffed Tomás; strings twanged
and wood cracked as they smashed his guitar ​on​the ground. ​
The last thing I remember was another crack, this one on my
head.
So much for my traditional wedding.
***
98

“Well, your whole wedding party and half the guests
are in here,” Camila says. There’s no AC in the prison, just
fans blowing hot air around. Camila has draped a wet towel
over her head, though the tap water is warm. She’s a climate
activist, jailed for trespassing on “critical infrastructure”—not
for the first time.
We talk deep into the night. Tomás and I are a cause
célèbre, Camila tells me. We’re being tapped to speak out
against a system that demonizes people and burns the planet.
She waves away my reluctance. “You teach history, and you
were jailed for love,” she says. “You can help.”
In the morning, guards extricate us from our cell and
lead us outside. I swim into a sea of people who’ve walked off
their jobs, out of school, into the fray. Someone has brought
Quiltro, who bounds over and slobbers on my face. Camila
waves at me frantically from a makeshift stage. I strain to look
for my family, but they’re nowhere in sight.
Then Quiltro takes off like a shot toward the prison gate.
I turn and see guards shepherding more prisoners outside—
among them Tomás and my mother. Quiltro guides them to
me. The crowd claps in unison as we reunite and make our way
to the stage, Quiltro at our heels.
99

Joshua Young
The Monuments
The monuments are gone
Good riddance I say
Talk about losing a battle
They lost an entire war
Cold cast iron faces
of Lee, Jackson, and Jefferson Davis,
Put up back in 1890 some twenty years
after the death of their cause
Not to mention the obscenity of
their cause, The lost cause
Statues of men, fighters not for
freedom, but for oppression
Men who deserve to
be studied, not gloried
Studied in the same way
you’d study history’s other despots
and tyrants, just to be sure
you’d know how to prevent
similar ones from popping up
They were put up during a time of change
A time of reconstruction of the Old South
Put up by people afraid of change
Afraid of the people they’d oppressed
So they put up images of Civil War generals
Thinking that would scare change away
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Thinking the cold iron faces would be enough
But cast iron doesn’t last forever
Change eventually came in a year of strife
Of death, of anger, almost 130 years later
Monument Avenue
A street once stained with mistakes
of the past Injustices displayed for
Everyone to see, in an otherwise great
city now wiped clean
Like a crack in the foundation patched up
a step in the right direction
On a journey that continues
down a long avenue
101

Paul Juhasz
Age of Heroes
Of what use the hero, if,
after all is said and done,
she says, “but I did not need rescuing”?
If, after the ground is littered
with the vanquished—slain dragons,
heart-staked vampires, giants cut
down to size—she says,
“but they were not monsters at all.
No, none of them were monsters, at all.”?
Why risk the wall of thorns,
slashing and hacking one’s way to the tower,
should she look down on the debris
and say, “But that was my garden and my view”?
What if she sees all my brave
deeds of derring-do, and says,
“but I did not need rescuing at all.
No, I needed none of these things, at all”?
What if she sees my shield is burnished
and dull, would no longer reflect the gorgon’s face?
Knows that in the field of heroics,
there hasn’t been a fresh idea in centuries?
What if we’ve had it wrong all this time?
What if the age of heroes has drawn to a close,
and we, at long last, must now find
another way to be?
102

Arik Mitra
That Strange Being
A strange being,
he walks from door to door
holding a seed in his hand he shouts
This’ll bring the beginning for all!
thrown out, slapped, occasionally fed.
He suddenly hangs from a tree one day,
that tree, which is cut down soon;
Years pass, village no more
the tech-hub in place soon to yield
left for commerce on greener fields
concrete cracks and iron rust
no life in sight, root or limb,
it rains incessant the monsoon span;
Another day, a shoot is seen,
then leaves, then branches, then all the band,
that seed from so many years ago
held by the sanest insane hands.
Stare lonely leaves on a mossy plain
under man, the balance twists and turns
And yet She takes defeat by leash
rising to create from the barest chance
103

Arik Mitra
Untimely Chord
An untimely chord has struck,
oppressive heat hits wild,
as summer hooves tear through
the calm Bengal winter dust,
silent shorts and shirts, silent sarees too,
emaciated souls in lanky walk,
oppression leaps about in laugh
fear mists, clouded vision before unfailing storm
corrupt this air, corrupt it’s beings
wages, rights floating as would the torn
pages of a poet’s mourn
thrown off the bus long before
his struggling life could see its stop.
Their hollow eyes. . .
women carried off into night,
simple farming men beaten pulp,
yes, wages come at high a price,
rights even higher sell,
abused, threatened, shooed off like stray.
At last rises, the blood-felt dawn,
then Morning, there’s a sudden sound,
Uncoils chaos — the giant serpent: Time,
Sandeshkhali rises like a lamp of night
with fire that can burn down worlds
bring to ashes, the grandeur of kings
with lathis, brooms, whatever salvage be
broken women, prevails Durga’s wrath
Revolt! Revolt! Because they starve!
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Because they wither with worrying minds!
Looms poverty, death’s very own smoke
veiled years without a rightful dime,
So they rise! They rise like ants!
for prey much larger, as large as kings
burn shops, markets, signs of rule
burns Sandeshkhali, like a lamp of night.
105

Stephen Gambill
Poem for the World
Take down all the flags.
Run a large, simple cloth
of white linen
up the flagpoles,
an unmarked page in the sky.
Lay down your patriotism
for awhile,
hold the whole world in your heart
as best you can;
hold your primal identity
as a citizen of Earth,
prior to your first memory,
deep in the marrow of your human bone,
deep in your human soul.
You brave ones,
set your zeal on a cause
that is worthy of your courage,
and make yourselves true.
Temper your valor with the love
of all life, at its roots, in its fullness.
If your patriotism conflicts with that
it will end a futile construct.
This new flag of Earth
slow-dances with the breeze,
following the lead
of the luxurious wind,
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its slow-motion ripples,
its swaying undulations inviting you
into a soul-dance that will
both steady and enchant your heart.
This flag is a blank page of possibility,
catching sunlight and shadow,
more resonant, more potent
than insignias or signs,
reflecting the creative light
that gave birth to this Earth
and all life upon it.
Its empty space,
the radiance of its light,
gives space for a whole new beginning,
signals to the nations, to all races,
a new possibility of life
together on the Earth,
living in this light
that makes new.
See on that field of light,
at that very interface
where nature borders
the handiwork of man,
a third thing, a new thing
that begins to manifest
in the dance of continual unfurling:
nature and humanity become one.
So we begin to embrace
and let ourselves be embraced by nature;
to move to her lead, like the sailor’s sail
in harmony with the wind -
instead of this jackhammer rape
of our own Mother
who gives us our very life,
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instead of this rigid, mechanized assault
violating the earth.
So go deeper than the allegiance
you pledged to a betrayed abstraction,
to where your true genius lies.
There is your only liberty.
You priceless creature,
why do you let someone else’s
false idealizations
embezzle half of you,
distract you from who you are
at your bedrock, in the deep place
of the root of your being?
You tell me a white flag
is a sign of surrender.
Yes, this flag signals surrender,
not to an opposing army,
but to an impossible new adventure -
deeply possible:
the cultivating of the Earth community,
already birthing;
to the healing of this world,
of the forests, the mountains, the oceans, the air,
the dark, crystaled caverns of earth’s heart.
The healing of the sacred animals,
the healing of all humankind.
108

U.C.L. Vilches
Fight or Flight:
The Real Story of the Girl Who Caused a
Multi-Car Crash and Her Foster Family’s
Police Investigation
After consulting many sources and eye-witnesses, East
News brings you the full story of the young girl who caused
a multiple car collision and what role her foster family truly
played in the whole ordeal.
The incident began last Saturday night, when a neighbor
reported yelling from the girl’s former foster home around
9:45 PM.
“I heard a little girl screaming,” said Freddy Drewford,
who lives next door to the foster family and was in his
backyard when the arguing started. “My daughter’s 11, and
that girl sounded much smaller. She was yelling ‘Stop!’, ‘Stay
back!’ and ‘Don’t hurt me!’. As a dad, I knew something was
definitely wrong.”
Mrs. Drewford saw part of the commotion from her
kitchen window. “It looked like two men, maybe the dad and
his son, were trying to corner the girl… Then, there was this
super bright flash of blue light that blinded me.”
It must have blinded the girl’s assailants, too. Disoriented
and caught off guard, they were unable to chase after the girl,
who immediately fled from the house… and into ongoing
traffic.
“I thought I was going to hit her,” a driver admitted. “We
were all shocked to see a tween run onto the street despite the
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ed light, like there weren’t any cars. I slammed the brakes, and
when she heard my tires screeching... Oh my gosh, was she
even human? That flash…”
“We almost DIED!” another driver shrieked. “She froze
like a deer in headlights, then BOOM! This bright blue
flashwave smashed into our cars like a bomb explosion!”
Fortunately, no one was gravely hurt. Having realized
that she put herself in danger on the road, the girl sprinted
for several city blocks until she reached the state’s police
headquarters.
“Her face was completely tear-stained, and she couldn’t
speak clearly at first,” Officer Natalie, the police woman in
charge of the girl’s foster family investigation, told East News.
“I calmed her down and told her that we weren’t going to hurt
her. She has spent a few nights here at the station under our
supervision, and Child Services will help her soon. She is not
going back to that foster family ever again.”
Officer Natalie did not let us talk to the girl at first. “She
is a minor and has suffered enough trauma,” she explained.
But that changed when East News showed the officer the
recording of our interview with the girl’s foster family:
MOTHER: “Our little girl did WHAT?!”
DAUGHTER: “She could’ve killed someone! And the
public thinks she’s a little angel!”
FATHER: “Now, you listen here, reporter: Kendra McHale
is a menace to society. We tried to raise her as best as
any good parent would, but we never trusted her.”
SON: “She’s too quiet! You’d think that growing up with
other kids would make her chatty, but the only time she
ever raised her voice was when she mauled the hands
that fed her!”
Officer Natalie refused to hear any more of the recording.
“People should know who the real victim is.”
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She then quietly ushered us to a back room in the
station, where overnight bunks were neatly arranged for
officers working graveyard shifts. On a bottom bunk sat a
bright red-haired girl, who was drawing something on a yellow
memo pad.
Officer Natalie had us wait outside the doorway and
gently stepped toward the girl. “Hey, Kendra. Some people
would like to talk to you about… what happened. Do you want
to?”
The girl noticed us, scampered off the bunk, and hid
behind the police woman. When she peeked her head to see
us again, her eyes were glowing a soft, iridescent blue.
Some of our news crew tried to hide our surprise. A
cameraman fainted.
At that, Kendra’s eyes glowed brighter and glittered with
tears. She buried her face into Natalie’s jacket.
“It’s okay, Kendra,” Natalie told her then faced us. “She’s
scared, and your reactions aren’t helping. If you’re nice and
friendly to her, she might talk to you.”
We decided to have a brief conversation with her in that
same room. Kendra partly relaxed, clutching Natalie’s wrist
with one hand and the memo pad with the other.
“Hi there. We want to help you, but we have some
questions.”
Kendra glanced at Natalie, who nodded reassuringly.
“Can we ask how old you are?”
Kendra slowly let go of Natalie and the memo pad and
held up nine fingers.
“You’re a pretty big girl. Did you know that your eyes can
glow before last week?”
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Kendra wearily looked at Natalie again and shook her
head.
“Do you want to go home? Do you miss it?”
Kendra scrunched up her face and buried herself under a
blanket. Natalie patted her back and scowled at us, but Kendra
sat up again, more fresh tears on her face.
The girl then handed us her memo. She had written I
don’t have a home with a blue pen.
We handed the memo back to her and waited for Kendra
to breathe steadily.
“We’re sorry for making you sad… Let’s talk about
something else. You like to draw?”
Kendra nodded shyly.
“You like to write?”
Kendra made a “so-so” hand gesture.
“But you don’t really like to talk.”
Kendra frowned and jotted something down. Her memo
now read Only if I have to.
“You’re a smart kid, you know. What’s your favorite thing
to draw?”
For the first time since we met her, Kendra smiled. She
wrote A little bit of everything.
“You must be really talented. If you don’t mind us asking,
what were you drawing when we came in?”
Kendra looked down at her memo and flipped a few
pages. She hesitated before handing it to us one last time.
With the police receptionist’s multi-colored pens, she had
drawn a brick house with a shingled roof. Curtains hung from
the windows. Outside of the house, a stick figure with a red ink
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ponytail sat on the lawn, looking down at an open book. The
sun was happily peeking from behind a tall tree in full bloom,
its flowers’ petals drifting towards the figure and the house.
Kendra is an orphan. She is accused of being violent,
untrustworthy, and unpredictable.
But the girl we met is a shy and misunderstood young
woman who yearns for a place to call “home.”
“It’s all I ever wanted,” she whispered.
113

U.C.L. Vilches
“Still I Rise”
after Maya Angelou
You may present me in your history
With your dark, malicious cries,
You may excavate my very grave
But still, like breath, I rise.
Does my outspokenness upset you?
Why you gotta be mad?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got an entourage
Right behind my back.
I don’t see you in the galaxies,
Whose colors I caress as I fly.
Like the wondrous cosmos around me,
Still I rise.
Did you want to see me shattered?
Overwhelmed with self-despise?
towed away inside my tiny cage,
Counting days until I die?
Does my growing pride offend you?
No need to take it to heart
’Cause I smile like I’ve got shining rays
Glowing within my wounds and scars.
You may insult me to my face,
You can glare daggers all you like,
You shoot me down to make your day,
But still, like flares, I rise.
114

Does my endurance surprise you?
Does it catch you so off-guard
That I fight like I’ve got angels
That can be seen from very far?
Out of the ghettos without a name
I learned to shine.
Up from a past that’s always shamed
My light intensifies.
I am a phoenix, enjoying the flight,
No one has put me down ‘cause all fails every time.
Leaving behind nights of mourning and sighs,
I fly
Into a dawn that ignites the sky
I shine
Bringing the gifts my dear ones gave,
I am the dream and the hope of today. I shine
I fly
I rise.
115

Leslie Lea
Mémoires of St. Guillotine
I.
in a flower wreath
and misty autumnal gauze
wielding my
Damascus bladed
Rose bud Chainsaw
I impose death on my captor
spreading spinal sin upon
titanium altars
It haunts me , that entity
tourmaline & fire opal eyelets
staring amid the sifted bones
of immortal imposters
these are the Memoirs of St. Guillotine.
II.
In the language of the holy blade
we name ourselves “criminals“
in the grimoire
of the 3 cherry moons
we sacrificed our blood and tears
along with
deep Earth offerings
of abandoned factories and cyanide
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we animate the damned
we raise our red flags
we march
hand in hand along the precipice
on our lips
with solidarity
these are the last days
of empty tables
III.
St. Guillotine!, red womb of the worker,
strike hollow their hearts
may the counterfeit
depreciate long after
the sun goes dark
bones ‘neath smoky caskets
planted by the unnamed
and armed
Angels
that prepare the holy funerals
of our unremembered martyrs
in this
fight for the future:
fire of the revolution
light the way
Written after The Coup - “The Guillotine”
117

Leslie Lea
Psalm for October
you crawl to me
burdens between your teeth
through twisted, moss-green velvet sheets
where our reigning femurs meet
and every unholy breath pants
your hand settles on the rise of my hip like a secret
moon-shadow
and still
we clutch at liberation
with divine femininity
we clutch at our own names
the names of our saviors
at the end of our fists
revolution strikes
at our un-met parts
you urge me:
be as needed as a knife
my knife by your side
I tell you:
I’ll cut down figs
soaked in honey-hymns
I’Il feed them to you as we descend
only to rise again
one day
when nothing
or everything makes sense
and
we arrive
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villainous and sideways
during the migration
of dunes
our warm breath frames
the dulcet skies
and
I remind you
in the blackness
to stay close
we penetrate
the mouth of the sea
as we bind ourselves
to each other
we dwell in the
electrical currents
of our unbaptism
surrounded by foamy
indulgence
each blasphemous
wave
licks the grace
from our wired chambers
our ritual
swells to the shore
in the end
we write our mantra in the sand:
“we are the monsters
and they should be afraid”
Day 1:
I led you softly
by your
unseeing name
the oracle of
St. Guillotine said,
“the follies
of repentance
are ahead”
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so we laid low
close
by the railroad
encased by
the thistly skeins of
your hair
there’s trust
in round rocks
as they skip over salted water
“Repent what?”,
you asked
so I whisper to the wind
“bare bones and star dust,
hag stones and
banana peels in the pines”
and you confess,
“But that’s what we live for”
“Exactly.
we repeat.
until it stops haunting us”
120

Michael Chouinard
Nuremburg Night
Freitag. Friday. Free day.
On that November night, the Tourist walks around
the old city and its castle walls when out of nowhere there
are small groups of people, many of them children, carrying
lanterns in quiet celebration as they wander over the
cobbled streets.
What’s the occasion, the Tourist wonders. It’s weeks
too early to be the Feast of St. Nicholas, a grand occasion in
the old world, as big as Christmas as he understands it. That
many in this country speak his language is lost right now, as
they are all speaking in their native tongue tonight, at least
when they do speak, for it is as quiet a celebration as he’s
ever heard. The locals all seem more like subdued trick-ortreaters,
as if they aren’t all that sure of whatever occasion it
is that they are celebrating.
Or maybe it’s only his own take on the event, after all
the beer he’d downed in the past few days, enough lager to
flow down the Rhine and the Main and the Danube and the
Elbe, and which must still be coursing through the Tourist’s
bloodstream. This whole scene seems slightly askew, out
of focus, like the paintings of Beckmann, Grosz, Dix, those
Expressionists whose decades-old works he’d been viewing
of late on museum walls.
121

He’d been train-tracking around Europe that fall to
see the sites he’d only read about the past four years for his
history degree. Weeks before, his sister had driven him to
the airport for his trans-Atlantic flight and asked him what
his biggest priority was on the trip, and he thought about it
for a few seconds, then answered her that he most wanted
to see the Berlin Wall because for some reason he thinks
it would not be there in ten years’ time. Already, there are
signs the East Bloc concrete is crumbing, eroded from years
of graffiti spray, signs that say, all in all, THE WORLD’S TOO
SMALL FOR WALLS. Or some such thing.
In the weeks that followed, he checked off Paris,
Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich and, yes, Berlin, where he
wandered along the Wall, checked out Checkpoint Charlie,
even noticed the curious crack of the old hollow tooth of
a cathedral that disturbed the surface of the ceiling in a
pattern that looked ever so faintly like a swastika.
That crisp, fall Friday he’d spent out at the old party
grounds in Nuremberg, looking at all those nation-building
grand designs aiming for the glory of the classical world.
Really, the Congress Hall does look a lot like the Colosseum
in Rome, or at least the pictures he’s seen, because he
hasn’t travelled to Italy yet.
At one point, he goes to stand on the platform that
once hoisted that dirty art-liquidation-sale of a painter
on the world, the spot where the adoring golden-haired
hordes could cheer the Leader on in his anti-Semitic wet
dreams, perhaps spurred on by that rumored syphilis.
This city the Tourist knows because of these rallies.
He’d come here out of historical interest, and he recalls
reading somewhere that it was chosen because of its
place in the old Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich, then
122

transformed into the rally grounds through classically
influenced architecture aiming for the glory of the even
older Roman Empire, a party for the Leader’s own party
crowd to dress up in their riding breeches and medals to
play their lusty games of soldier.
A decade later the city was known for punishing
the Reich’s war criminals still alive in the ashes of their
dreamed-of thousand-year reign that flamed out in less
time than the failed Weimer party crowd that ran Germany
before them.
This city packed in a lot of history in a few short years,
and to the Tourist its denizens seemed awfully friendly that
November day, as if they still felt they had much to answer
for from decades earlier.
Yet, on this night, they are strangely quiet. Could
something sinister be in the works again, slouching towards
darker days? The Tourist can’t help but wonder for a
second or two, before heading back to his hostel and laying
his beery head down on his bed. He doubts it. History
doesn’t always repeat itself, and he had felt something like
enchantment that evening as the locals wandered about,
trailing those glowing lanterns, like fireflies.
With only occasional dispatches from the International
Herald Tribune the last few weeks, the Tourist has wandered
through Europe oblivious that there is a world out there,
not one of history but one making history, a history
changing beneath his feet. For weeks, he had been hearing
reports of people fleeing, breaking out over the border.
Even the trains, those epitomes of fascist efficiency, were
not running on time, or even in the right direction, as he’d
found out on one headed for Hannover a few weeks earlier.
123

Only, he hadn’t wanted to go in the direction of Hannover
at all.
Still, as the Tourist, slightly hungover, sits silently
in his current train car winding its way southeast toward
Salzburg, he has no clue what had happened in the world
the night before, when children and adults wandered
around in the cool, autumn air, holding light itself in their
hands, and he would only learn later that Saturday from
a fellow traveller bringing word from Berlin that two days
previous, just before Thursday midnight, nothing ever stays
the same, that history had changed yet again, that Reichs
are not meant to last a thousand years and that even
the strongest wall too will one day fall to its foundations,
perhaps far sooner than anyone, even the Tourist, would
ever suspect.
124

125

Thảo Đinh
126

Taking the Leap
127

Kyle Carson
How to Win Subjects and
Manipulate (the) People
Step One: To control the people, you must first conquer
their bodies.
Resistance is birthed in the space between skin and soul.
To quash it, you must map and surveil their bodies, just as you
have done to the lands they dwell on. Quarter their whole,
draw lines across acceptable and insolent shapes, colours,
sizes. Control the clothes they wear, how they hang their hair.
Keep them from dancing, from singing, from praising, from
moving to where your eyes cannot track them. When even
that fails to show them the err of their ways, bleed them of all
ill-will brewed against you. Open their skin to your teachings,
cage them, enslave them, break them and remake them, and
when the violence you wrought sickens your soul, grant your
brothers a chance at the whip while you seek refuge in luxury
of privacy.
If they’re going to think like you, they must walk like
you, dress like you, bathe like you, breathe like you. Carve
your shape into the unmolded clay of their body until they
no longer recognize it as their own. Some savages know
their bodies as sites of resistance, but with labour, and
education, and time, they will come to see their bodies as we
do: a wellspring of capital, a machine of labour, a cog in our
machine.
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Step Two: If resistance is born in the body, the mind is
what cultivates it into rebellion.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and as they line their
thoughts against yours, there may come about conflict,
disagreement even. To quiet these storms, you must replace
their thoughts with your own. Grasp their mother tongue down
to the root, tear that weed from their fertile heads, and plant
your own words in its place. Vilify their thoughts, wants, and
the beliefs they’re taught, their customs and couture, myth and
metaphysics, the ways they parent and the ways they preach,
until they sunder those parts from themselves and surrender
them up for a taste of acceptance. In the void left behind,
tattoo your doctrine into their grey matter, infect their flesh
with your words, so they exhale your thoughts instead of their
own.
Step Three: To conquer, you must divide.
If you cannot keep the people apart, you must drive
them apart. Revolution is a communal act, sparked through
the friction of many charged bodies meeting and agreeing that
you are the problem. To break them of misguided attempts at
self-governance, you must scatter their forces and break trust
in the other. Divide them into classes that quibble semantics
while you feast on the corpse of their waning culture. Separate
sons from their mothers, drive daughters from the senate,
dictate who should hate on who, force wedge after wedge
after wedge between friend, family, foreign and familiar, and
only when you’re certain every human is alone in a body they
don’t recognize, with only your thoughts to guide them, are
you safe enough to worry.
Only then are you safe enough to lie awake at night,
tossing, turning against the waves of your unsettled
conscience.
Only then are you safe enough to sit in the fear you have
stewed and let it marinate you.
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Only then are you safe enough to wonder how long
your locks will hold against the onslaught of a thousand angry
ghosts.
Because, if we’re honest, you know what is coming. Deep
in the souls of your beaten-down people, far past the reach
of your words or your whips, burn the embers of a forever
fire that resists the oppressive fall of winter. No matter how
complete your rule of them, the spark that gives them life
is the very thing that makes them fight. Flames fed on the
hunger for liberty and justice are building within the people,
and every opportune spring those sparks are leaping from
the soul, kindling resistance across the body, stoking minds
to rebellion, driving the community into action, pushing the
people to ignite.
Step Four: Rage, rage against the resilience of the soul.
Even as you rip them to pieces, they are healing their
bodies through the love of their ancestors. Even as you
tear out their tongues, tear up their books, tear down their
confidence, they are learning to celebrate what you taught
them to shame. Even as you cling to power like an infant to a
bottle, you begin to see the futility of your own oppression.
You may scatter their families, sunder their culture,
poison their land, burn them and beat them, but they’re still
reaching across borders, boundaries, fences to find each other.
The people are dancing and singing in secret, they are passing
poetry through your walls. The drum pulses through the skin
of the earth, calling them back to the homeland, and they are
heeding, returning to the sacred waters to wash themselves
of your influence. The bones you buried in your garden have
resurfaced, driven up like bubbles seeking air, releasing their
knowledge back to the people. They’ve taken up the old
ways, the weaving and beading and tanning and tending and
mending and screaming and loving and living and living and
living, and they will not be broken a second time.
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They have reforged themselves in their own image, made
stronger through the searing resilience of the soul, and soon
your every attempt to sew discord will only stew communal
rage.
Soon the streets will flood with people, their voices
echoed high.
Soon the hands that built your kingdom will come to
take it back.
Oh, my king of crooked crown, don’t be so surprised. All
who sit above the rest, made fat off other’s blood and sweat,
are doomed to fall one day. Take comfort knowing all great
kings are remembered for their service, and when they serve
you, red and roasted, they’ll thank you for the feast.
You fed on them for years and years, and now they get
to eat.
131

Tom Murphy
The Great Stew
I stew, Prue
a great bouillabaisse
medical Iranian saffron infused
Black Sea cauldron
Bosporus syphon
Scrapping the sweat
from
Cami
chicken blood
black rock
walk
into ink
that writes
here
now
Prue, I stew
Crimea shoreline
Where are those wheat tankers
that grew south of Kyiv
cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells
couldn’t they be clamming shells, Prue
off the OBX
where they grow large?
Or the shells pagan
of the way
—on the bridal dress
baptizing James’ arrival
if you believe
132

in
any of
that myth
Prue, I stew, Prue,
proving in the drawer
rising to the occasion
laminations obvious
flaky crust
above the war
of the
Ukrainian
Holocaust
At the hand of Putin
I stew, Prue,
That teat white hot
Bosporus choppy
a bay leaf &
frankincense
ground cardamon
cumin seed
to pulverize
a shot of Raki
Prue
please,
Prue,
I stew
In rising tides
In rising temps
In rising prices
In rising anger
In rising expectations
In rising cremations
In I, Prue, I stew
133

My aroma
Prawns in a boil
Curry in a bowl
Fresh blood in the streets
Bodies rotting in the yard
Prue,
Eat me up
Before I fester
Before I mold
Before my
Pulchritude
Becomes
Putrid,
I stew, Prue
Into bones and broth
Savory and hot
Swallow deep
Drink to your health
Prue
I’ve stewed and stewed
Feed you my
Blood
Down to
The marrow
I stew, Prue
134

Nick Chhoeun
To Survive
after Chance the Rapper’s “The Big Day”
It’s old news that everyone is dying,
no matter the jokes we use to make others feel
happiness from our hurt. I still miss Robin Williams.
I miss Kurt Cobain. I miss the irony of loving a person
for how much hurt they hold in the background.
I hate that I miss their pain.
But the only way to survive is to go crazy. Yeah, the only way
to survive is to go crazy.
My favorite songs are emotional, depressing.
Ones that scream about lost love, trauma, pain.
I drive to work listening to them; I listen to them at the gym.
They are played in the background of house parties, and bars
where people escape from their emotions.
I love the irony of feeling good that someone
feels sad at the press of a button.
But the only way to survive is to go crazy. Yeah, the only way
to survive is to go crazy.
If everyone is dying, we should all be comedians—
we should all be musicians, painters, writers.
Things wouldn’t be ironic anymore,
they would be real, something to hold.
We wouldn’t be afraid to be held
and told, that we all have soundtracks
that need to be heard.
But the only way to survive is to go crazy. Yeah, the only way
to survive is to go crazy.
135

Phoebe Sheng
‘Mixee Udon’: A Recipe
for Recovery
Slice those veined stalks with the same knife with which
you almost slit your throat while your parents weren’t home.
They aren’t home now either, but instead of planning... that,
you’re planning lunch, and green onions will be the garnish.
Garnishes should be last, but it’s mixed udon soup, so why
not mix up the steps? Meanwhile, Chef Shu prepares his own
plate in the Diamond Grill, and Fred Wah questions whether
this prison of a kitchen could be a means of liberation from the
categorisation of Chinese immigrants.
Slide the green onions off the knife’s edge into a red
and white bowl while Shu slides the mixed grill onto the
counter and “shouts loudly into the din of the kitchen, whether
there’s anyone there or not, mixee grill!” (16). The assonance
in “shouts loudly” draws attention towards the adverb’s
redundancy, exaggerating Shu’s loudness, just as stereotypes
paint Chinese people as rude. The fact that Shu shouts
despite being alone in the kitchen dismantles this stereotype,
suggesting that his loudness is borne from habit rather than
deliberate disrespect. Shu, and all Chinese immigrants, are
not rude, but only come across as such because the coloniser
amplifies the colonised’s perceived flaws.
Ask your parents why they shout loudly.
“This is just how we talk!” Mama yells.
“Taiwan is a small island. Big population. If you’re not
loud, no one will hear you!” Baba hollers.
136

One ingredient that you and Chef Shu share is pork. It
symbolises wealth and prosperity because the characters for
“home” and “family” are a pig under a roof.
Repay your parents for all they’ve overcome for you.
Practise your filial piety. In Ancient China, they practised gegu.
If mama or baba get sick, cut out a piece from your thigh, boil
it, and feed it to them (Irons, 2016).
Ask your parents if you’re a good kid.
“Of course!” Mama yells.
“You’re the best of me!” Baba hollers.
They don’t know you’ve cut your thigh before. Not
because they were sick, but because you are.
Cut the pork into squares, boil it, strain it, and put it
aside.
Tomatoes are the second shared ingredient. Shu sautees
his, but you get rid of the skins first. Cut a cross into four
tomatoes. Soak them in hot water for a minute. While you
wait, Chef Shu ladles some “mixed steamed (actually canned
and boiled) vegetables” onto his plate (16). Parentheses alert
the audience to the dish’s inauthenticity, calling upon the
caricature of the lying Asiatic. The coloniser acknowledges
the Chinese’s competence, but claims that their capability
goes hand in hand with cunning. As if the coloniser isn’t even
more crafty. So what if the vegetables are boiled or steamed?
They’re all vegetables. Same difference.
“Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese,” the boy in
your third grade class chants, pulling the corners of his eyes in
different directions. “Same difference.”
Get red and white miso. One lighter. One darker. One
sweeter and milder. One more robust. Not the same.
Don’t boil the miso, you’ll lose the fermented flavour. Boil
the udon noodles separately, so their starch doesn’t cloud the
taste.
137

Smooth snow-white serpents stir under the swirling
steam. Clamp the udon noodles with chopsticks. They slither
back into the boiling nest of coiled sisters. Foam spills out of
the pot, spraying you with a sickeningly familiar sting. Take
them out with a fork.
Remove the four tomatoes from the water. In Mandarin,
four sounds like death. Peel off the skin, like God flayed the
lamb for Adam and Eve.
The saints say questions are the father of lies’s way of
speaking to you, because question marks are shaped like
snakes.
“God is love,” they say softly.
“Homosexuals won’t inherit God’s kingdom,” they hissed.
“We stand with the truth!”
Fork... ed tongue.
Forget serpents. Think about the white snake spirit who
fought against the laws of nature to be with her spouse, and
unlike in most forbidden love stories, got a happy ending.
“Homosexuals won’t inherit God’s kingdom,” the serpents
spit. “Stand with the truth–”
“Colonialism is the father of lies,” the white snake
says softly. “Your parent’s country was the first in Asia to
decriminalise homosexuality. If that’s not God’s sign to stop
gegu-ing, then what is? Remember who really criminalised it.”
Chop the tomatoes into quarters, putting them with the
pork. Four doesn’t sound like death now.
Back to the beginning, where Wah explains that the
mixed grill “part of... colonial cook’s training,... to serve the
superior race” (16). Alliteration in “colonial cook’s” and the
consonance in “serve the superior race,” along with the comma
between “colonial cook’s training” and “to serve the superior
race.” There’s detachment between what the cooks are taught
138

to do, and what they are trained to do (16). The apostrophe
in “cook’s” signifies that the training belongs to the cook, and
is for the cook, not consumers. Thanks to the canned and
boiled vegetables, you know the mixed grill is not as “properly”
prepared as the supposedly superior race thinks (16). Are we
dishonest if they can’t tell the difference between the canned,
boiled vegetables we serve, and the steamed vegetables
they expect? Pretend to please your oppressors, but do what
is convenient for you. Make a mockery of their standards
through your “compliance.”
The last ingredient is your favourite because you don’t
need a knife. No more being squeezed into these stereotypes,
it’s this white tofu’s turn. Don’t chop it, rip it into chunks. More
convenient. Mixed udon, not a model meal.
Place the tomatoes, tofu, and pork in the pot. Turn the
heat off and melt the miso. Scoop soup over the noodles.
Sprinkle on green onions. Save some for your parents. Serve
yourself.
Pig out. Shovel it in, slurp it up. No one else is in the
kitchen.
Bring your bowl to the sink. Scrub the scarlet off the
cutting board. Clean the knife, your stomach full as your smile.
139

Hannah Murry
A Flower is Meat
We were all born naked
Shame foreign to our minds,
Flowers swaying to gentle wind
Picked and left to waste away
“Compliance,
Worship the soil and the air
Danced by the will of you father
And under the nurturing of your mother.”
Those ancient words will fester
Peeling away at the lies
To betray our modest origins
Egos
Individuals who exist
who fed on the limbs of complacency
And bathe in tar
We’ll dance around a fire
As the tar hardens our skin
In the middle is ash-
It is your liver, spine, and heart
Balance a weight on your breast
Sever your obsession with maturity
But lay in it as you climb to youth
Then stand on the edge of insanity
As dogs warn of a femme fatales
140

Feed them your rib bones
Tie a ribbon to you waistband
Eat only bread and drink water
As you sing beautiful hymns,
About your hatred for the female sex
I’ll turn your womb into simply words,
Fit it on a sheet of paper
And allow swine to hold pens,
You are at their mercy,
High on a marble pedestal
Stab wounds on your chest
But in your heart’s hands
Is a gun of strange descent.
They squeal about your ovaries
As their hooves brand your waist
“I am human”
For the flower is a illusion of the mind
My petals carry tells of injustices
My thoughts make you stomach grumble
And my defiance make you sick
In my ritual
I’ll repent to the mirror,
Ask for forgiveness
And hug your soul
Amor fati
The air will smell of flowers
Sweet and fresh
Or musky
The scent of complacency
Unapologetically me,
Woman
141

Dustin Marley Hackfeld
generation
one
day my
fleshy and
boned being will
loosen in humic
fire. i will breathe deep roots
and green a patch of earth from
which the grazing bovine will gain
sustenance. cud and cowchip may well
be my future. let me be the pastime
of a heifer’s leisure. when i fall to earth
again, i will parasol the dung beetle
with fungal glow and souleye the seeker
with bright psilocybin vision. death
will be the rainbow: i will no
longer be: washed clean of sleep:
awake like morning fog,
gathering water
into a tongue
to carol
all that’s
gone
142

Dustin Marley Hackfeld
cicada
chthonian nymphs
are shedding veils
in a rain of roots
listening
to the cycles of sun
ticking seeds of water
through the humic sky
dancing to the screaming beat of summer
143

Dustin Marley Hackfeld
the seeker
I cut open the dawn craving gold
a monomania of bees
buzzing the wound
carving a door of honeycomb in the thigh of night
I enter the valley of a lost legacy
with ears of coal
soaking in fuel
in the forest of lyric leaves
I eat fruit from the palms of the dead
descend
the womb
and cross cold springs
rhythm drums through my moony veins
songs vine my lungs
burst buds of melody
into flowered wings
Dance into my blood
winds feathering through
wet meadows of sun
144

Rainbow my flesh
and pull my greening soul
up through these storming roots
Enlanguage my rise with birdsong
and the bright unrolling of petals
Let my bones blend
in the white break of sun
and my tongue bloom a blue bend of sky
The blade of my heart
is whetted
on the edge of rapture
and darkly gleams
in the rising
breast of light
I plunge deep
into dripping caves
where the sun sleeps
under honeyed waves
and crawl out across the ox-eye shore
with the day in my teeth beneath a cello of wings
145

Stefan Sencerz
Skippin’ Stones
(An Evolutionary Renga)
Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694), Yosa Buson (1716 – 1784), Kobayashi
Issa (1763 – 1827), Masaoka Shiki (1867 – 1902), and Taneda
Santoka (1882 – 1940). Renku by Stefan Sencerz.
summer grass…
all that remains
of warriors’ dreams
Basho
receding tide…
they fade away, too
my nightmares
piercing chill…
in our bedroom I step upon
my dead wife’s comb
Buson
a fiery dusk…
we light up incense
for our dogs
swatting a fly
but hitting
the Buddha
Issa
146

squashing a roach
I chant sutras
for its soul
a spring day
a long line of footprints
on the sandy beach
Shiki
as I return home
a stray kitten on a doorstep
purrs her mantra
sometimes
even the sound of drinking
seems so lonely
Santoka
rain falls on rain
alone at home
I water her plants
147

Contributors’ Notes
Originally from Jalisco, Mexico, Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa
is a queer poeta (he/él/they) and a national organizer for
immigrant & worker rights living in San Antonio, TX. His poetry
collection titled, Heartbreak and Spaceships in the Age of
Extraterrestrials was a finalist for the 2024 Howling Bird Press
Poetry Prize. His poetry first appeared in an anthology titled
Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness
and Coming Out (Cognella Academy Publishing, 2014). His
poetry mixes themes of immigration, borders, queerness and
love with sci-fi, world-building, and speculative genres. They
have forthcoming poetry scheduled for publication in two
sci-fi Chicano/Latinx anthologies titled: Chicanofuturism Now!
Visions of a Raza Future and Not Your Papi’s Utopia.
Barbara Anna Gaiardoni & Andrea Vanacore alias gaia
& vana are finalists of the Edinburgh “Writings Leith”
contest. Barbara earned her spot on the Haiku Euro Top
100 list for 2023 and on The Mainichi’s Haiku in English
Best 2023. Her Japanese-style poems have been published
in 145 international journals. They are have been translated
to Japanese, Romanian, Arabic, Malayalam, Hindi, French,
Chinese, Korean, Turkic and in Spanish languages (Website:
http://barbaragaiardoni.altervista.org/blog/haikuco-2/).
Andrea’s video and photographic works encompass his
performative approach toward reality that he puts in dialogue
through his investigation. His long professional experience
was able to give concrete form to his passion, in the name
of a kaleidoscopic and versatile art without predetermined
boundaries. (Website: https://andreavanacore.it/). They are life
partners in Verona City (Italy).
Nick Chhoeun is a writer and a teacher based in Connecticut.
He earned his MFA from American University. His poems delve
into the layers of meaning in language and in emotion that are
often in conflict with one another. As a teacher, he emphasizes
the need for understanding through creativity and empathy.
In his free time, you can find him rockin’ out with his band Not
Freshmen.
148

Michael Chouinard is a British Columbia-based writer with
fiction published in print and online. He has worked in a
warehouse, driven a cab and done graveyard at a convenience
store. Mostly, he’s been a newspaper reporter. He lives with his
wife Carie and their cats, Alice and Iris, on Vancouver Island,
and he is looking for a home for one novel, The Thirty-Three
and a Third Revolutions, revising a second and plotting a third.
Kyle Carson is a trans writer studying English and Sociology
at the University of Calgary. He has worked as an authenticity
reader for publishers such as Scholastic, providing feedback on
manuscripts around social work and transgender inclusion. He
also runs a book review blog aimed at uplifting marginalized
voices. You can find him at kecarson.blogspot.com.
Alé Cota (She/They) is a trans Latiné performance artist,
educator, and poet. She holds a B.A. from Carleton College in
both Latin American and Gender Studies. Her work primarily
focuses on poetry narrating queer and trans experiences
through a framework of place trauma theory. Her confessional
style anchors despondence with an inclination toward triumph.
She explores memory, nostalgia, and the poetics of violence
within intimate, familial structures.
Ethan Norales De La Rosa is a current undergrad senior at
TAMU-CC pursuing a degree in Computer Science. When he
is not studying he’s either writing poetry or has hands on a
controller as a means to pass time. Ethan aims to shoot for a
Masters in Computer Science once he graduates.
Thảo Đinh was proudly raised in Hà Nội, Việt Nam. Her love
for knowledge and exploration guided her to Trinity University
in San Antonio, Texas. She spent a semester in Scandinavia
learning travel writing. Thảo graduated with Honors in
International Studies with a minor in Creative Writing in
2023. Thảo currently works full-time as an East Asian Studies
Program Coordinator at Trinity University. After her job ends
this summer, she will return to Việt Nam to reconnect with her
roots and start a new adventure. Instagram: @tofuran FB: Tofu
Rán
Elijah Esquivel is an author and poet signer-songwriter from
Robstown, Texas who has been published in the Windward
Review and won 2nd place in their “Myths & Hauntings” Flash
Fiction contest. He holds a BA in English from TAMU-CC. His
writing explores themes of resistance, liberation, and social
change.
149

Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science,
taught for over 40 years at Del Mar College and was the
college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator.
Flores was awarded the LULAC Council 1 Educator of the Year
Award (2014) and the Del Mar College Dr. Aileen Creighton
Award for Teaching Excellence (2013). Her poems have
appeared in the Texas Poetry Assignment, Corpus Christi
Writers (2022 and 2023 editions) anthologies edited by
William Mays, the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine, and the
Windward Review.
I, Stephen Gambill, live in Corpus Christi, Texas. The arts are
a primary home for me. I continue to explore several related
paths; poetry, prose, visual art, ritual theater. I traveled and
performed with an experimental theater-in-the-surround in the
70’s, then a musical/spiritual community; created ritual for and
worked a men’s rites of passage in the 90’s-2000’s. Presently
I’ve been working on several painting commissions, writing
poetry, and I help facilitate a vision quest, Wilderness Dance.
Lisha Adela García has an MFA from Vermont College of
Fine Arts and currently resides in San Antonio,Texas with her
beloved four-legged children. Her books are: This Stone Will
Speak, A Rope of Luna and Blood Rivers. She was Andres
Montoya Prize finalist and is widely published in various
journals. Lisha has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a
recipient of the San Antonio Tri-Centennial Poetry Prize. Lisha
leads the Wyrdd Writers, a writing group based in San Antonio.
She has given workshops for various groups, colleges, and
universities. Lisha is a certified Poetic Medicine Practitioner.
Ian Garrabrant is a 24 year old undergraduate student at
George Mason University, pursuing a degree in Creative
Writing. Their notable works include “Apathy”, published in
the 2022 Collected Winning Poems from The Poetry Society
of Virginia, and Angelo della Luce. They enjoy their Northern
Virginia home and find inspiration in their backyard, which also
acts as their writing room.
Abra Gist is a writer and multimodal creative born and raised
in Texas. She is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at Texas
State University. Her poems, stories, and articles can be found
in the Houston Chronicle, RED INK Journal, and Pour Vida Zine,
among others. She loves exploring the outdoors and nature,
practicing and teaching yoga, raising her two sweet pups, and
being a closeted bedroom musician.
150

Abra Gist es una escritora y creativa multimodal nacida y
criada en Texas. Actualmente es candidata a MFA Poesía en
Texas State University. Sus poemas, historias y artículos se
pueden encontrar en el Houston Chronicle, RED INK Journal, y
Pour Vida Zine, entre otros. Le encanta explorar el aire libre y
la naturaleza, practicar y enseñar yoga, criar a sus dos perros
dulces y ser una artisa músical encubierta.
Leanne Haas is a Houston-based content marketer with a soft
spot for creative thought. She’s also a proud TAMU-CC alum,
where her passion for poetic language was first cultivated.
When she’s not writing, she can be found petting the nearest
cat or scouting out the newest coffee shops in town.
Dustin Marley Hackfeld is pursuing a B.A. in Literary
Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He has
been published in Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, tsuri-dōrō,
Switchgrass Review, and Humana Obscura. His work is
an exploration of earth-consciousness– the intra-acting,
polyphonic, entanglement of all life forms. He lives in Ingleside,
Texas with his wife, daughter, cat, two dogs, and a yard full of
flourishing weeds.
Annie Huckabee has worked as an adjunct instructor in
English at Del Mar College since 1981. She serves as the state
head essay judge for the United States Academic Decathlon
and is fortunate enough to supervise first year teachers as they
complete their certification journey. Annie’s collection, Such a
Character , celebrates cherished characters from her personal
and literary life.
Dharshani Lakmali Jayasinghe is Assistant Professor of
Anglophone and World Literatures at the Department of
English at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). She
works on topics in world literatures and film such as migration,
borders, Global South epistemologies, LGBTQIA+ identities,
and translation. Her work has appeared in publications such
as Law and Literature, Dibur, Curated: Thinking with Literature,
Occasion, Routed, and Modern Fiction Studies.
Jeran Jongema, an aspiring writer and a profound lover of
literature, dedicates much of his time to the realms of reading
and writing. He strives to entertain and reach people through
his works, believing that even if only one person comes across
the material, that is one more person than there was previously
who went unseen. His pieces⸺”Echo” and “The Mess We
Made”⸺are his first published pieces.
151

Paul Juhasz is a Pushcart nominated author of five books:
Fulfillment: Diary of a Warehouse Picker, a mock journal
chronicling his seven-month term as a Picker at an Amazon
Fulfillment Center; As If Place Matters, a collection of short
fiction; and three collections of poetry: Ronin: Mostly Prose
Poems, a finalist for the 2022 Oklahoma Book Award; The Inner
Life of Comics; and The Fires of Heraclitus. He currently lives in
Oklahoma City.
Leslie Lea is an unapologetic poet whose words serve as a
rallying cry against the oppressive forces of capitalism and
fascism. Her poetry is a defiant stance against the injustices
perpetuated by these systems, weaving together the threads
of resistance and solidarity. With a deep respect for her
indigenous roots and an unruly spirit, Leslie’s verses paint an
otherworldly portrait of the reality of struggle for equality and
liberation. Her key themes focus on love, decolonization, and
satanism. Through her poetry, she challenges the status quo,
amplifying the voices of the marginalized and igniting the
flames of revolution. Leslie Lea’s work is a testament to the
power of art as a tool for social change, a beacon of hope in
the fight against the forces of colonization and exploitation.
Nupur Maskara is a freelance content writer in India. Her work
received the Orange Flower Poetry Award in 2020. Nupur’s
work has been published in Wry Times, The Gateway Review,
The Loch Raven Review, Zoetic Press, Meniscus (forthcoming)
and many others. She has authored two poetry books– Insta
Gita and Insta Women. Website: https://nupurmaskara.wixsite.
com/writer. Tweet to her @nuttynupur.
Arik Mitra lives in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He has been
writing for four years now. He writes mainly short stories and
poetry in English and Bengali (mother tongue). His work has
been published by Clarendon House Publications, Red Penguin
Books, Rosey Ravelston Books-Dyst Journal, Writers and
Readers Magazine, and more.
Tom Murphy is a road poet and the 2021-2022 Corpus Christi
Poet Laureate and the Langdon Review’s 2022 Writer-In-
Residence. Murphy’s books: When I Wear Bob Kaufman’s Eyes
(2022), Snake Woman Moon (2021), Pearl (2020), American
History (2017), and co-edited Stone Renga (2017). He’s
been published widely in literary journals and anthologies
and will be featured at The Beat Museum, San Francisco
among other locations. tom@tommurphywriter.com https://
tommurphywriter.com
152

Hannah Murry is a 2nd year undergraduate at Texas A&M
University-Corpus Christi majoring in Clinical Lab Science with
a minor in Psychology. Originally, she is from Southeast Texas
where her family has roots in Louisiana. Born in Beaumont
Texas, later Hannah moved to Port Arthur Texas with her
family. She is the youngest of two older brothers, and also
Aunt and godmother of two nephews. Furthermore, Hannah
graduated from Woodrow Wilson Early College High School
where she obtained an Associate’s degree from Lamar State
College-Port Arthur along with her high school diploma. Since
she was in middle school, Hannah always used writing—
whether it be poetry, short stories, or journaling—as a means
to cope with the highs, lows, and realities of being an African
American woman navigating through womanhood. She hopes
to show others that there really is power in putting pen to
paper.
A 2023 Fulbright-Hays Scholar to Taiwan, Laurence Musgrove
is a professor of English at Angelo State University where
he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing
from a Buddhist perspective. His latest poetry collection is A
Stranger’s Heart. Laurence is also editor of The Senior Class:
100 Poets on Aging, a forthcoming anthology from Lamar
University Literary Press.
Cryptid Parke is a creative writing, editing & publishing
student at Pacific University. Their work focuses primarily on
the places people inhabit and what it means to exist in time
and space. When not writing, Cryptid can be found cuddling
with their cats, hand-binding books, and haunting strange
clearings in the woods.
d. ellis phelps’ poems, essays, and visual art have appeared
widely online and in print. She has taught fine arts in various
venues with students of all ages for decades. She is the author
of four poetry collections and of the novel Making Room for
George. She is the founding editor of Moon Shadow Sanctuary
Press and of the digital journal, fws: international journal of
literature & art. www.dellisphelps.com @dellisphelps
Pari Sabti is a nascent MFA candidate at George Mason
University. Born and raised in Iran, they currently live in
Northern Virginia. In their free time they enjoy going on
walks, singing, and arguing about semantics with their sister.
You can find their poem “Zardi-ye Man Az To” in Calliope
Literary Journal, and their poems “Ahvaz” and “nemifahmi” are
upcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review’s MQR Mixtape: Place.
153

Stefan Sencerz, born in Warsaw, Poland, came to the United
States to study philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He teaches
philosophy, Western and Eastern, at Texas A&M University-
Corpus Christi. His essays appeared in professional philosophy
journals (mostly in the areas of animal ethics and metaethics)
and his poems and short stories appeared in literary journals.
Stefan has been active on the spoken-word scene winning the
slam-masters poetry slam in conjunction with the National
Poetry Slam in Madison Wisconsin, in 2008, as well as several
poetry slams in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Chicago.
Phoebe Sheng is a Taiwanese-Canadian freelance writer on
Vocals.media, where she has produced several short stories,
movie reviews, and poems. Her commentary on the 1994
Mulan got selected to be a top article. Her sci-fi horror chatlog
“Objective” has been published in the 2023 SAAG Writing Prize
Reader. Recently, she has completed her third revision of her
multi-medium military dystopian novel Dragon Horse.
Jennifer Thomas is a science writer and social justice activist
living in Salem, MA, USA. Her recent work has appeared in
Flash Fiction Magazine and 365tomorrows. You can read more
of her stories at jenniferthomas.net
My name is Aaron Thompson, born in South Texas in 1984,
from a good family that I love dearly. However, somewhere I
made a wrong turn and lost my way and myself for quite some
time. Poetry has become a passion of mine and has helped me
find the way back to myself. Each piece gives a small glimpse
of who the author is. Hence the expression of poetry being a
window to the soul.
Interested in worlds of the inconceivable, Ahmahdre Turner
writes in hopes to captivate, inspire, and induce wonder in the
minds of his audience. After his commitment in the United
States military, he decided to pursue his education at the
University of Alabama and continues to produce stories for the
people curious enough to read them.
U.C.L. Vilches is a multi-ethnic CSUN alumna with a BA in
English - Creative Writing. She enjoys experimenting with
different genres and creating emotively vivid experiences for
diverse audiences.
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L.T. Ward (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer who mostly
writes speculative fiction, horror shorts and novels while
spending her days creating shenanigans in a university library,
raising her children, and satisfying her never-ending thirst for
knowledge through reading, meeting people, and first-hand
life experiences. She has several published short stories in
the literary, historical, fantasy, and speculative fiction genres.
Readers can find her on Twitter: @LTWard2 or her website:
ltwardwriter.com
E. D. Watson is a poet, yoga teacher, and library worker in
Central Texas. She is the author of three poetry collections,
including Via Dolorosa & Advent Wreath, winner of the 2023
Cow Creek Chapbook Prize.
Born and raised in the small town of Rockport, Texas, Kaitlyn
Winston is a graduate student attending Texas A&M
University-Corpus Christi pursuing to further study her favorite
subject, English, focusing on creative writing. Outside of her
schoolwork, Kaitlyn works as a freelance creative writer and
spends her spare time playing video games, watching horror
movies, and spending time with her cats.
Joshua Young is a poet, writer, and artist from Richmond, VA.
Josh Young’s poems primarily focus on social issues, emotions,
and city living in general. In addition to written poetry, Josh
Young also competes in poetry slams and open mic readings.
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REVOLUTION
WINDWARD REVIEW VOL. 22, 2024