To appease the women,
the government decided
all men should stay at home at night.
Nights are for sisterhood.
Nights are for our bar hopping,
tequila after tequila – shot after shot
until we forget the whole world.
Nights are for us, child-bearing people
who forget ourselves just to please all.
Nights are for all the hobbies we missed:
book after book, painting after painting,
film after film.
Nights are for us, daughters of the moon.
what you don’t know can hurt you
what you don’t know can turn your body
against you
—Brian Russell
Blessed are those with low pain tolerance: The world drops you mid-air
then asks, Are you alright? In 2014, my name got crossed out of a lineup
consisted of 12 members for an interschool dance competition I dreamt
of joining since sophomore year. If I had the guts back then, I could have
been expelled from school at 16. If I had the guts back then, I would not be
talking about this, and that, this, that, this, that, this, that, and this, though
I’m getting ahead of myself. The narrative begins in the part where I was in
the parking lot, practicing. Post-lunch, our crew leader turned on the music
from his portable speaker. I walked towards the stage. I warmed up and up.
Then, collapse.
Consider to pocket this moist
Layer of loam: a cache of glass,
Ore, bones before the banyaga
Rattles the ground. The myth
Describes a gentry of anitos
Walked this very earth, sated
With salamanca. It should be
A given that we’ve sculpted
Enough idols in our mind
But she’s got beautiful eyes, Mama!
My little boy points to the calico cat.
They glitter when it’s night
When they’re not oozing.
I agree, they’re sympathetic
Even honourable, battle-scarred,
The tips of her ears all shades of red
Raw pink rose burgundy maroon purple
Her tail, a broken stump,
Ugly and furless, raised and defiant;
She picks scraps from the neighbour’s drain.
I am looking out the bus window playing
River by Joni Mitchell. It is snowing there,
you sent me pictures of cobblestoned streets,
of you and your lover, four degrees cold, you
say. Meanwhile the trees are green as ever here
in my country. The children chase the chickens
and the sun trails off behind them. A mother
is picking green mangoes from the trees and
the men are drinking rice wine by the road.
The river runs smoothly, slowly painting the dry
rocks, while the stray dogs are swimming with
the catfish. The farmers are resting in their huts
beside the sleeping water buffalos. But it don’t snow
here, Joni sings, it stays pretty green. What do I know
of winter? I ask the rice fields of my country,
of snow? I only know of birds and trees and wishful
thinking. I know only of cold. I wish it snows here.
I wish you are here. In the prairies beside me lying
in the lush dry grass, laughing, and it is summer.
Rochelle Ann Molina 
Hezron Pios 
Ana Margarita Nunez 
Christian Baldomero