You were four
When you came to this country.
Shame was the first lesson.
Being neither black nor white
Meant you were welcome nowhere.
There were no ESL programs in those days,
So English was not optional.
 
By the time you were fourteen
Your accent was long-gone.
You sounded just like any other Midwest girl,
With blurred vowels and dropped G’s.
You ate hamburgers and mashed potatoes
And adapted to snow,
But there was no hiding that black hair, that brown skin.
It was easier to pretend you were Italian,
To pepper your speech with arrivedercis
And hang out on the east side with Joe Church’s boys.
 
At sixteen
You birthed your own true-blue American
But gave her a red-white-and-green name.
 
At thirty-nine
The grandchildren began to arrive.
They had names like Robert and George.
 
At sixty-three
Great-grandchildren,
Of which I was the fourth.
 
You called me mjia.
At the market, you would point.
I would say, manzana, pollo, papas.
You would say, ¿Que color? 
I would say roja, blanco, marròn.
You would point to yourself and I would say, morena.
You would point at me and I would say, gringa.
 
When I was seven and you were seventy-two
I refused to answer you in Spanish.
My stubbornness held out till I was twelve
And you were seventy-seven.
I was too young to understand that heritage
Is not a hobby. It’s not something you can just put down
And pick back up again at your leisure.
I was too young to understand that a tongue
Is also a root. What nourished and sustained you
I thought was dust, so I spat it out.
 
When I was seventeen and you were eighty-two
I spent a summer in Madrid. You were so proud.
You loved my Castilian accent, my postcards of the Escorial,
My recipe for tortillas españolas.
 
When I was twenty-two and you were eighty-seven
You couldn’t understand the Indian doctor’s accent.
Then you ceased to understand the nurses, the hospice workers,
The soft-spoken priest.
On good days, you thought I was my mother.
On bad days, I was just some white girl.
Names, English, eighty years--
All of it had faded, as if you’d already returned
To that bygone place.
 
When I was twenty-five and you were ninety
You died.
 
Now I am thirty-four
And there’s no one to call me mija.
Sometimes, I still dream in Spanish.
People I feel great tenderness towards,
I call by Spanish names;
In moments of great distress,
I revert to your exclamations, ¡Ay, por dios!
¡Que pendejado!
But I can barely roll my r’s anymore and I no longer
Check the bilingual box on job applications.
 
And yet, I had you longer than you had Mexico.
If I live as long as you, then I will have had
Sixty-five years to lose and reclaim
A tongue, a nation, an identity,
A root, a history, a shrine,
A refuge,
 
You.

​
Author Bio:
A lifetime resident of Kansas City, MO, Lauren Scharhag is a multi-genre author and poet. In addition to The Order of the Four Sons series, her works include Under Julia, The Ice Dragon, The Winter Prince and West Side Girl & Other Poems. Her work has appeared most recently in A World of Terror anthology, The SNReview, The Rockhurst Review, Infectus, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She is the recipient of the Gerard Manley Hopkins Award for poetry and a fellowship from Rockhurst University for fiction.

My sisters twist their arms into mine.
The rhythm of our feet on cobblestones
begins like morning.
This country is certain.  It opens
its wings like a newly –hatched eagle.
I steal the green fields, comb them through my hair,
bathe in the soil until I am black and this is home.
 
The sun, a last cackle rubbing the sky, and
I delve deeper into the road with each step.
My arms become my sisters’,
driven from my shoulders by the tongue
that rattles broken in my throat.
 
Time slides flat as the land.
Dusk spurs a horse over a fence,
her eyes whip us as she shakes,
steadies, then stretches past.
A drunken man sitting outside a café buys us ice cream.
He knows even our breath droops in the evening heat.
 
In bed our talk, like our feet,
swell and sag with sleep.
My arms, my sisters’ arms fold around me.
Morning begins the rhythm of departures.
 

Author Bio:
While in her teens and twenties, Heidi Henkel Seaborn wrote, published, and won writing contests. She also gave extensive public readings of her poetry. Then life got in the way. After three decades, three kids, four marriages, 27 moves and a successful business career, she started writing again late last year with the advantage of all that life. Living in Seattle, she is currently benefiting from the mentorship of David Wagoner and the wonderful community of the Richard Hugo House. 

i) flat rounds of bread
the baker kneels
above the oven pit
flame red in his face
still dark dawn

ii) raisins piled high
street vendor tends
soft colorful pyramids
six varieties at least
flat sweet fruit

iii) old women knit and
walk, fingers automatic
they climb into the bus
filthy metal and plastic
only utilitarian sweaters

iv) snow slush at the curb
swirling black, leap
from the taxi, school
girls in rubber boots
thick neck warmers

v) evening street foods
perched on ice, waiting
for grilled lamb, onions
dim lamps lit, the men
breathe frozen white


Author Bio:
Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college Over 300 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. The natural world is generally her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

鉢の人 刺し
hachi no hito sashi
One Who Stings as a Bee
•
Tenderness provokes,
as a switch on knucklebones,
a biting temper.

In visceral play
we absorb each other’s tongues,
unable to stop.

All our wounds in front;
It is because we are friends
that I fight like the devil.


Author Bio:
Catori Sarmiento is an author who has contributed fiction to Nothing. No One. Nowhere. by Virgogrey Press, The Citron Review, Brick Rhetoric, Foliate Oak Magazine, and Crossed Out Magazine. She has also contributed non-fiction to Her Kind and This Boundless World and several academic essays published by Student Pulse. Ms. Sarmiento also has had poetry in numerous publications including serving as a featured author in The Fukushima Poetry Anthology. Professionally, She is an English and Writing Professor in Tokyo, Japan. Learn more at: http://catorisarmiento.com 

Sad and beautiful
motley patchworks of broken
 
cloth, unique in form and feel
stitched into a whole
 
new unfortunate existence
to share, because they care to
 
surrender, yourself
to nocturnal vulnerability

whole, wrap their arms
around your slumber
 
golden and you, comfortable
or comfortably numb
 
next morning comes,
for you to rouse
 
in contentment, douse
in careless, fling it aside
 
walk away and begin
your day as it lies a puddle
 
crumpled and disfigured
with your edges and smell
 
embossed into its heart
a relic of convenient
 
past, and easy future
for some of us
 
are quilts too.


Author Bio:
Sukanya Roy is a seventeen-year-old woman who is able to do almost anything fairly well, but does not consider herself an expert in one thing. Poetry serves as emotional and existential catharsis for her, although that is probably not how she would’ve described her first experience of writing. The couplets and tercets first started flowing naturally at age seven, in her native language of Bengali. Growing up, she always found solace in books and art and poetry. For her, they were the most productive ways to make sense of the world around. She continues to seek happiness from small things in life, which does not usually include people, except children.

She spies first light through distant trees
beyond the littered path that winds through frosted night.
Absent from the world and life too long,
Entombed in darkness,
buried in silence,
ensnared in Winter’s clenched and hateful hands,
she struggles up
from valleys of grief
inching by on shallow beams of hope.
 
At the edge of the world
where sorrows dim
she comes upon the green fields
of her longings and desires,
where icy mourning melts and thaws toward Spring,
where night will never fall again,
slaying all her tomorrows.
For in the shadow of this solemn dawn,
once dead, she lives again.


Author Bio:
Susan Speranza was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island where she had an interesting and creative childhood. It was during this period that her future stories and writings took root. In order to keep sane through all the craziness of life, she spent her spare time writing in high school, college and later on when married. Anything and everything. The culmination of this effort was a prose poem, The City of Light, which was previously published and has recently been given new life as an ebook.

Somewhere in the middle of her life so far, after a great personal upheaval, Speranza went back to school, became a High School Librarian. She fulfilled a childhood dream of living in the country when she finally escaped suburbia and moved to Vermont, where she now lives, works and writes. 

Living,
breathing art form, I am
a sculpture of divine light,
flattering shadows and
constantly updated ambitions
silhouetted against
not-so-common sense
nine to five
the daily grind
a carbon copy in the ant heap
falling in line wherever
order is applicable
body of a woman
in subdued hues
of corporate costume
starched and tailored rags
befitting the common slave
of a capitalist mindset
face of conformity

but do not judge me
by the cover

I’m a stilettoed socialist
strutting her talent
amid these temples erected
to worship money
if you know enough
of the world
you can crack
the cipher
of my swagger
I have my own agenda
I’m not lost
I’m a fashionable vermin
who knows her way around
these tow-away zones
one-way streets and
orthopedic bus stops
I’m a gambling addict
wherever the stakes matter
and have cast my lot
on a future
that outshines
these bright lights
and a soul
of enough magnitude
to not let this big city
define me

and you can’t give me enough
elevator rides
as to convince me that
people are meant to
be boxed and move
in one direction alone

and you can’t make me
cross streets through
underground tunnels too often
as to make me stop
juxtaposing myself
and the other pedestrians
with the archetype of
warriors of a Resistance
emerging into the sun

and no matter how many
metal detectors you
very politely force me
to walk through
I’ll never forget that
I’m concealing a weapon
that you can’t see
unless you truly,
deeply know me.


Author Bio:
Iris Orpi is the author of an illustrated novel, The Espresso Effect (2010) and two books of compiled poems, Beautiful Fever (2012) and Cognac for the Soul (2012). She also co-founded the book reading series, Lit After Dark, in the Philippines. She is a mathematician and educator by profession, and has also been a community leader and activist. Currently she is a stay-at-home wife and mother to a one-year-old. She finds inspiration in city life, trips to the ocean, food tripping, and art in different media and genres, most especially ballet and impressionist paintings. Her poems and essays have appeared in over a dozen publications in the US, Canada, the UK, and around Asia.

"Kiss me or I'll kill you."
That was forward.
I like forward.
"Put on this blindfold," she told me.
I did.
She was about to show me she cared.
"How do you feel about nails?"
“Fingers," I asked?
"No... Jesus."
She took the blindfold off and said I needed to stay crucified against her wall.
It’s how my lady got off.
I asked for a crown of thorns and she told me she was in charge.
This is my baby.
Ain't she polite?
 

Author Bio:
Joseph Randazzo is a writer from Long Island with an affinity for Poodles and Tom Brady. You can read his poetry and short stories on Empty Sink Publishing, Original Van Gogh, Children Churches & Daddies, Down in the Dirt and Conceit Magazine. You can also listen to his podcast "Keith & Joe" on ITunes, Stitcher and live on the @KeithLeanza Periscope channel. Say hi to him on Twitter and Instagram @theLBjoe; @chokeslampoetry

“You can’t hang a swing from this limb,” said my mother
I looked at her in confusion,
“Some branches do not lend themselves to holding anything.
Some are too weak;
Others-too small.
And those that are big and strong yet still may not be long enough…
You want the ones that reach out,
Out to the sky-
So you can feel like you’re flying
And never hit the tree.”
 

Author Bio:
Lisa De Young lives in a small town in Northwest Indiana with her husband and three daughters where she manages a dental office. Her love of writing fiction and poetry began when she was a child continues to be an inspiring passion that moves her daily. She has short stories published in The Bleeding Lion and Theme of Absence and poetry forthcoming in Ricochet Review. 

I was born with eyes closed and ears wide open
My mouth: moving, 
Hands: frozen at my sides

Growing up, 
I used my voice to gain success;
Singing,
Comments in class,
Conversations in English with grownups,
Conversations in my limited Spanish with other grownups

I listened in class, but hardly read
Only half-looked at movie screens, as my mind wandered
The world went in one ear,
Then out of my mouth

I raised my voice to be heard
Joined the speech and debate team
Didn’t have to look at others to understand them, 
Just tuned my ear toward their direction

I became an actress, a singer, a speech teacher
Then, the criticism started
My voice: too weak, too pitchy, too girly
My ears: assaulted by the negativity
It’s all I ever heard

Then, I discovered a culture with ears closed and eyes wide open
Active hands and voices unimportant
Blunt, realistic, and yet accepting
They are teaching me to talk with my hands and listen with my eyes
No one ever comments on my voice
The Deaf are helping my eyes to open


Author Bio:
CLS Ferguson, PhD is a communication professor at Mt. San Antonio College and California State University, Northridge and a Mary Kay Sales Director. She paints, sings, acts, models, produces independent films, and has published many academic articles and two academic books. Her portrayal of The Black Rose in Silence, which she also co-wrote and produced, earned her a best actress award and a best film award at the LA Neo Noir Festival. Her music video, Secrets & Lies is currently earning accolades on the indie film circuit. CLS has published poetry in Shangri-La Shack, Still Points Quarterly, PQLeer, and other places. Her poetry collection, God Bless Paul is out on Rosedog Books. She has a dog, Sadie, with her husband, Rich Ferguson. http://clsferguson.wix.com/clsferguson