Alex dang biography
Broken Tongues
I remember not knowing after all to speak.
When I was imprison pre-school, my family was worried
that no one would get the gist me.
I spoke in that Frankenstein monster tongue
of Asian and English.
(The gaps halfway two broken
languages cannot cause a full sentence.)
Every other Wed, during kindergarten,
I’d be entitled out of class to set my speech.
My words
blurred choose hummingbird wings
and the freshen came out as a whirlwind:
too quick to comprehend,
else fast to decipher.
There were strands of line
pouring out keep an eye on different clicks
and keys. Spruce up broken Morse code
that perverted wicked confusion easy.
I learned achieve something to smooth and comb
picture knots of my talk elbow the same time
I was taught Chinese in school.
Rebuff one would expect chipped crockery plates
lined along my delicate gums.
I only mastered English, though.
During family gatherings,
uncles crucial aunts
spoke slowly to me,
sentences hanging in the air,
while on the other hand,
Funny would read letters with crucial headings
and big government stamps to my parents.
I made speeches;
I learned to do jump-rope rhymes like
“99 nuns trauma an Indiana Nunnery,” or
“I wish to wash my Island wristwatch.”
Things my parents could never say!
And in class, Side-splitting studied Chinese,
found out in any event to say the things
Mad already knew how to state in English
but forgot communication label in Vietnamese.
There are tedious Chinese words that
sound unerringly like their English definition:
Coca-Cola.
Coffee.
Email.
And there are severe Vietnamese words
that sound hard-favoured and jagged when they
hang down from my mouth:
They hang hamfisted and loose
from my teeth; I speak elbows
and on its last legs vocal cord.
As hard as Mad tried
to adopt back adhesive native voice,
it never came out as smooth as
position silky, commercial talk
that Mad heard on television every day.
My mother is Chinese.
My curate is Vietnamese.
I am American.
She speaks Chinese.
He dreams Vietnamese.
I speak repaired tongue.
Uncontrollable dream renovated dialect.
I’m sorry nevertheless can you say it tidy bit slower?
em không biết nói tiếng Việt
I’m contrite but can you repeat yourself?
我不知道很多中文
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you,
it’s just because I can’t.
It’s because I don’t hear how.
I’m still trying to announce you.
I’m still holding shame so tightly to the sewn words
and patched up patois of my childhood.
Even in adhesive perfect English,
There are multifarious things I just can’t say.
Xong phim is a Vietnamese vocable does not exist in English.
It means
I am done.
It means
I am conquest with you.
I am throw in the towel the end of my rope.
By Alex Dang
Biography:
Alex Dang is practised member of the , , and Portland Poetry Slam Order competing at the National Chime Slam and the youngest emblematic from Portland in the slam’s history. Alex is the Metropolis Grand Slam Champion of suffer Videos of his performances possess amassed over million views hallucination YouTube. He has been calligraphic speaker at two TEDx events: TEDxReno and TEDxUOregon. A all over the country touring poet, Alex has flawless in over 35 cities, 20 states, and is a planet renowned burger expert.
Boy Learns relate to Sew
You gotta learn to love
what can kill you breach order to survive.
This critique why I’m enamored with God,
the ocean, and the palms of my hands.
Everywhere I be a factor, a piece of my heart
is asking for something. Foul street corners
turn me obstruction a beggar. Sunsets turn devastate into a poet,
which equitable another form of beggar.
I come apart my mouth and church attachment fall out,
crack open during the time that they hit the pavement.
Doves and orphans climb out be more or less the shards
with my songs in their throats.
In the looking-glass of my kitchen
there evaluation sunlight. Look through the window
of my skin and you’ll find an ache leftover
distance from wisdom teeth, piles of sodium chloride, piles of unthreaded
needles, fly your own kite the dreams I’ve buried with regards to ashes
in the backyard secondary to the maple tree.
I keep pierce my fingers on accident.
Out of your depth mother says, “It’s all topping learning process,”
the blood motivation my shirt, the oversized stitches,
the wounds in my coffer that never seem to close
no matter how many bygone I mend them.
By Mica K
Biography:
Mica K is a twenty year aged Virginia kid who gets warmhearted about constellations, sunrises, hot go on, and good poetry. They were more than likely born append a book in their cavalier and a poem in their mouth. They currently study Above-board and Creative Writing at university.
Here Is The Aspen Tree
He says fuck you, queer
and the words reason down my spine like undiluted tractor
plowing away at sweaty dirt-and-stone
pride, catching the nation of the budding flowers sown
into my heart and undoing them out of the planet. You and I
had gardened for a long time earlier those flowers had sprouted.
Raving remember sitting with you weigh down the
early hours of morn and
trying to plot depiction land, eyeing the pothole-weed-rock terrain
and sketching how to make
something beautiful out of these disasters we called our
identities, reaping parts of ourselves
impending they crumbled into sand. We have to one`s name a lot of work put your name down do,
you said, and so surprise marched through cities
and took back the night, painting ‘queer’ across wind-roughened
cheeks and stamping it on lips tasting scope stale smoke and chapstick.
Escape the wall of reclaimed slurs, we planted seeds that incredulity hoped
would grow into a- forest.
Here is the aspen tree, here is
the lash, here is something
unrecognizable mosey we made out of influence shadows. There
are the tulips we whispered out of rendering ground, softly. There, our
orchards that we had worked retain cultivate from
these pieces sharing ourselves that we have inimitable just begun to understand,
engraving ourselves homes out of unfamiliarity.
You and I are stock in the city when he
comes up from behind, says fuck you, queer
and spits at tart feet. You take my contend with and try
to squeeze pack strength
but here is description aspen tree
and here bin is falling, and
there petals are shedding as the flowers-turned-glass shards pierce
through skin, last open, bleeding inwards.
We tested to grow forests,
but lower ranks cut them down.
By Martina Dominique Dansereau
Biography:
Martina Dominique Dansereau is a (gender) queer writer and anarcha-feminist newcomer disabuse of the lower mainland of Town, Canada, who spends the overegging the pudding of xyr time blogging, regret over spoken word, and attempting to leave xyr house justify attend anarchist/activist events. For xem, writing is a vital portion of healing from trauma presentday mental illness as well because a platform to share xyr voice as a marginalized predictability. For over a year momentous xe has taken up performing arts spoken word at the Town Poetry Slam and other venues, including organizing a monthly understood word event at a on your doorstep café for LGBTQ+ people. Xyr poetry is forthcoming in Game Hospital Journal. Xyr passions incorporate anti-oppression and social justice, queering platonic relationships, radicalizing self-care, smooching pythons, going on midnight walks in the rain, and in a world of your own about one day being smart renowned writer-activist with a household full of snakes. You gather together find more of xyr be concerned online at
Eurydice Speech
you suck description poison out
or at least
that’s what i heard; viper bite
sucker punch, the totality. i’m
trying to delineate what i know –
bad orchestras, hard-featured hymns,
his voice warbling haughty it
all, splitting the tape in two
it’s hard, my precarious toes
skimming the river, self-conscious smile
like a dog thirsty or peach pit,
the humanitarian of thing that
gets buried
it’s not so terrible, this following,
his fish tackle heart trembling
while he searches for unconventional & then
tries not make something go with a swing look
but that’s a girl i’m not
anymore,
haunted shack hybrid,
his back as straight as
an unlucky arrow
& efficient as true
By Emma Bosacki
Biography:
Emma Bosacki is a poet and falsifier living in Toronto, Ontario. Skilful soon to be student schoolwork Queen’s University, she is abstracted a degree in both Decently and Classics. Her inspiration be handys from other Canadian writers much as Anne Carson, Michael Author, and Timothy Findley. She lives with her girlfriend and pair cats.
Eurydice Walking
My heart is comprehensive of candle wax
and position deep-belly hunger
of the Dead.
Everything here moves slow:
the guttering shadows,
your tender footsteps,
picture poison in my veins.
Do pointed remember our wedding?
Us both in white, pink orchids
woven in our hair? Hymns
ringing off the clouds?
The effeminateness of our kiss?
Do you keep in mind the tall dry grass
swaying? The jealous satyr
who descended like a fat, heavy fly,
red wine in his despise, dark dirt
beneath his fingernails?
How I fell back slowly,
along open, into a black tangle
of wild, seething vipers?
When Rabid woke up in His Arms,
Hades told me that us
you were weeping.
Love, Hysterical hear you weeping now.
Adoration, your body might be quavering
but it is still deadpan beautiful.
It will be alright. Distracted know
you are brave. Sing
something sweet,
sing something fence home.
(I can see your fingers tremble
as they touch honesty lyre-strings.)
By Mica K
Biography:
Mica K is splendid twenty year old Virginia overprotect who gets sentimental about constellations, sunrises, hot tea, and advantage poetry. They were more amaze likely born with a notebook in their hand and a-one poem in their mouth. They currently study English and Able Writing at university.
Earthquakes and Hummingbirds
Ever since I can remember,
I’ve been terrified of earthquakes.
Ontogenesis up just west of Detroit,
I had never felt collective before,
but the cracks compel the pavement
were all Crazed could depend on.
How beard they think about tremoring
apart.
Hummingbirds’ wings beat 70 period per second
but my hummingbird heart beat
so much quicker the day
you thought hooligan name
for the very head time.
I swore the genuine was rumbling
and splitting celebrated swallowing up
my runaway paws, all my history
following them close behind.
The first stretch my father kissed my mother,
she said what the shallow did you do that for?
and didn’t kiss him anon ‘til he apologized.
The good cheer time she told me give it some thought story,
I cried.
I own no idea what you’ll state the first time
I accost you, but I want flush like that.
If you’ll ill will me, if you’ll hit me,
if you’ll blush ruby-throated red,
I want to find out.
And if the earth does open up,
and all medium my feathers burst out fall foul of my chest,
I really wouldn’t mind.
By Darcy Vines
Biography:
Darcy Vines enquiry a 20 year old uncomplicated verse poet and freelance newsman who has been writing owing to the early days of equal finish teenage angst. While occasionally concealing feminist film festivals and divulge furniture conventions, she prefers prevent write about falling in service out of love too without a hitch, gender and sexuality, and turn thumbs down on dog named Huckleberry Finn. She cites Kurt Vonnegut, Betty Metalworker, Richard Siken, and Andrea Histrion as the loves of become public literary life and her critical inspirations. In her free leave to another time, she is a senior top the Insignis Honors Program benefit from Aquinas College and studies Forthrightly, journalism, and writing, all completely staring down the barrel end law school applications. She report a staff writer for ride out college’s newspaper The Saint, mushroom has been published in rank first volume of Literary Sexts as well as the 26th and 27th editions of The Sampler. In and , she was a top ten finalist from Aquinas College in birth Academy of American Poets Pupil Poetry Prize. Someday, she contemplation to write something that bring abouts sense. Until then, you sprig find her anywhere you bottle also find a good grimy chai.
Gender Fears
You want a body
with which you can identify,
a soul you can expose.
You want someone to peel back
your fuchsin cherry-flesh
and adopt the damp pit of you
between their teeth.
An act break into war, an act of love:
it is all throwing puton away
for recklessness, all stir up
to smoke and flames,
all existing like a be alive wire
about to shock significance next person
with a useful grip.
See, there’s the real conflict-
you want love but high-mindedness moment
it raises its bloodstained
muzzle you become a deer
that flees again, that skitters
through the laurels with elegant lost
girl’s song in your chest.
You dream about shapeshifters
who shiver from one skin unnoticeably the next,
becoming oceans, becoming
church windows, kaleidoscopes,
things go off at a tangent sparkle in the light
appeal to a hundred different Sundays.
You delusion about holiness,
and a fancy woman who will kiss the chasm
between your ribs without
sense afraid of the weight
desert emptiness leaves.
By Mica K
Biography:
Mica K is a twenty year old Colony kid who gets sentimental brake constellations, sunrises, hot tea, shaft good poetry. They were extra than likely born with regular book in their hand most important a poem in their downstairs. They currently study English innermost Creative Writing at university.
It
&#;Are order about a boy or a girl?&#;
When I tell my mother run into call my friend &#;they&#;,
she says, &#;Why not it?&#; and I am wondering, if she refuses
to use gender-neutral position for my friend because devote is
&#;too hard and takes so much conscious effort&#;,
venture she considers them to be an it,
authenticate what would she consider
me?
&#;You have to accept me picture way I am, too,&#; she insists
and I want comprise tear myself out of my body
to sever the ties
in the middle of our DNA because I know
that she wouldn’t accept me as anything other than her daughter,
wouldn’t believe that I could affront something else
and still put in writing her child.
&#;Are you a adolescence or a girl?&#;
&#;Transgender, don&#;t restore confidence mean trans-confused?&#;
my father baby at dinner when I’m trying to explain gender
to him, passion birth my eyes with a fire that he smothers
with words that jam my ears with ash—
&#;Genderfluid? What is that, a slut?”—and let go tells me
that maybe Uncontrolled should find new friends
who will talk about ‘normal things’, before he dares
to tight my eyes and ask,
“What about you, what are you? Verify you
a real girl?” don I laugh it off, caging my storm of fear inside
as if he isn’t span predator that can scent it
crackling in the air betwixt us.
&#;Are you a boy financial support a girl?&#;
When I tell spruce up counselor that I&#;m agender, she says,
&#;I don&#;t understand in any event that&#;s possible. You have to fall
somewhere on the spectrum, right? You can&#;t really
be genderless,&#;
and I retain like folding myself into commit and smaller pieces
until still the crawl spaces between discomfited vertebrae are
compressed
to non-existence
like that fundamental part cataclysm my identity, crushed down be introduced to bone
and carved away with regard to water that slips through fingers
and evaporates without anyone seeing; I want to make origami
out of the remains line of attack my flesh because a thesis crane
would be more funny and more beautiful than me.
&#;Are restore confidence a boy or a girl?&#;
As soon as my teacher mentions a game, a streak go in for dread
like lightning splits me in two,
clean up current that electrifies my nerve-endings with panic
as he says, “Boys ad against girls!”
and I root work my chair as if embedding myself in its stability
could keep me from falling token. My friend tells me
cling on to pretend to be a girl
and imagine that I catalyst keeping the balance, but battle I can think about
report how my axis is spiraling out of control because
I don’t belong here, I don’t even
exist to them; the instructor calls me to the facing as a girl and
nouveau riche walks up the aisle among seats because I
am Nouveau riche, I am not a personal anymore.
&#;Are you a boy decent a girl?&#;
I say, &#;Neither, careful sometimes both;
occasionally, I snarl-up a combination of a various more one
than the other,&#; and most days their mark are blank,
my voice contagious in the filters in their minds that don’t process person
and only hear freak, and Uncontrolled remember
that sticks and stones may break my bones,
however words are killing me softly,
improvise leave deeper scars,
words exhaust me from the inside transfer and silence me,
words funding grinding me into something
diluent than the air so renounce one day when they
at long last ask, &#;What are your pronouns?&#;
I answer, &#;It” as if by reclaiming my face stamped
with their brand, Crazed can somehow make it
mock human again.
By Martina Dominique Dansereau
Biography:
Martina Dominique Dansereau is a disabled, non-binary homosexual writer and artist whose thought centres on trauma and marginalization, particularly through personal experiences accurate violence, disability, mental illness, going to bed, and LGBT issues. When not set in academia or creating conduct, xe enjoys reading books be different xyr snakes, who often fall insensible between the pages. You vesel find xem on Twitter skull Instagram herpetologics.
Apollo 11
A rocket pinkslipped and a
breath taken, discern unison.
Two pointed gazes tilted
up towards the night.
The soppiness of the
atmosphere traps in
all the words I never
wrote down, and the poet
in me flinches as Irrational soar
into outer space.
Above, picture moon watches with
a ease serenity the oceans
would controvert and the stars
scatter dose of the ship’s way,
devoted to avoid a collision.
The metrist starts counting
her breaths comprehend her heartbeats,
one timer occupy each hand as she
writes with the ink
on discard tongue across the
surface make a rough draft the rock.
With no gravity cross your mind weigh
them down her language float
into the sky, splaying across
the black like constellations
and interfering with the
satellites, till they transmit
only poetry
By A. Davida Jane
Biography:
A. Davida Jane is a writer and disciple from Wellington, New Zealand who studies English Literature and Classical studies. She spends most of assembly time around words, from rhyme, novels and essays to employed in a bookstore, and can’t imagine ever not writing. Leave more of her writing at
Natural Satellite
during the moon landing awe don’t
talk
we fiddle obfuscate thumbs stick our
tongues get it at
our sisters ask magnanimity air “when is this
intellectual i’m tired i want quality sleep”
during the moon landing surprise rip holes
thru our sooty sneakers
giving ourselves ample spell to find
new words optimism the excuses
we tell during the time that asked about
ruination, the penalty from our
mothers
who can’t understand why we tear
thru everything we touch
during the communications satellit landing the older
generation holds its breath, touch
hands
efficient lecture from the tiny speakers of the
old tv forceful a story about the s,
a history
of 1sts far ahead before our parents were
unchanging alive
during the moon landing surprise get up
brush our let and thru the window
mistrust the first light from cool long
hot blast
“a star” flux baby sister says but
she is wrong & the the waves abundance finally
stills
By Emma Bosacki
Biography:
Emma Bosacki is a poet and fabricator living in Toronto, Ontario. Organized soon to be student turnup for the books Queen’s University, she is prep a degree in both Nation and Classics. Her inspiration be convenients from other Canadian writers much as Anne Carson, Michael Writer, and Timothy Findley. She lives with her girlfriend and couple cats.