Volume Six Excerpts
Excerpts
from Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's Tiger by the Toe:
Aromas of hong shao rou—red braised pork, anise, rice wine—assail Farmer at the door. Three months of vegetarianism have obliterated her tolerance for meat, just as decades of barbarous honesty have obliterated her mother’s tact. Her aunties, at least, pretend ignorance: “What? Vegetarianism mean even beef? Okay. You eat the meat this time and next time I get it right.” But not Mama.
“Your friends don’t eat meat, make sense.” Mama sets the plate before her with finality. “But you can’t cook to save your butt. So for you, vegetarian is stupid.” Eeny meeny miny mo. Catch a tiger by the toe. But no, her mother is not that kind of Asian woman; isn’t a tiger, doesn’t have claws, never withheld love or enforced stringent discipline. In twenty-three years, Farmer has never once doubted her mother’s kindness. Mama’s just very, very candid.
John F. Buckleys' Roll Call for Our Somebody Else:
Here I am, not not any Other. American
pride without reflection. The red, white, and
black: blood, teeth, and cosmos.
Waterboarded, longtime resident with
questionable documents, coexisting with
cries of the outraged, with slick native neckties.
Here, coffee, kombucha, wheatgrass, and water
at daybreak, on the porch, under the bridge.
Maker and taker of mountains of historical
anguish. Here I am, that word and
its modifiers: ice, sand, prairie.
Bricks in the air and a shotgun with beanbags.
Here I am, too far Oriental, too far Occidental.
Here I am, forsythia in the wilderness. Here,
scant body hair at a delousing station.
Grandspawn of Hegel, a dialectic in unity.
Here I am, with truth, in truth, of truth,
not an outgrowth, but the cool side of the trunk.
Here, baklava after bratwurst and ramen.
Here, the whistle commanding police dogs.
Two hundred pounds pulled behind
a pickup truck. Here I am, praying sincerely,
praying all wrong from the vantage of
slapstick voices, slotted eyes. Working for
fractions of marbles. Here, the skin, here,
the flesh, here, corps with ambiguous phalanges.
Sewing the fists to designer gloves, watching
my fingers bleed. Here I am, holding a hand
that I may not, holding a hand out,
withholding. Here, history cleaving
tongues, history cleaving to tongues,
axe and the solder of centuries,
rust on the lips, dirt on the palate.
Chad B. Anderson's But All This Comes After:
The girl and boy stroll along the path curving through the trees to the river. They hold hands. He apologizes again for forgetting the blanket, the condom. She shrugs. A large Virginia is for Lovers tote bag swings from her shoulder. In the bag is a journal clasped shut with a rhinestone. In the journal are sketches of trees, hands, and an abandoned tractor in the pasture where the boy’s truck is parked now; a packing list for college; an account of her mother’s tongue-lashing when she lost the crucifix necklace she’d gotten for her birthday. She had shrugged then, too.
The boy drops the girl’s hand and his fishing gear to lift a fallen tree branch from the path. He refuses the girl’s help and drags the branch into the grass and thistle on the path’s edge. Two days from now, he’ll return here, alone and drunk, to chop the branch into pieces. He’ll drop the hatchet and nick his calf, leaving a comet-shaped scar.
The girl and boy reach the end of the path, emerge from the trees, and step onto the dock.
from Joel Tomfohr's The Inviolable Rule of Love:1
.
My dad hunched over the shovel, his back broad, and thrust down and withdrew the fresh, heavy, white snow. He had already moved out, but he came by the house on days after snow had fallen and cleared the sidewalks anyway. Again, and again with the chucking and crunching of the shoveling of the snow and it lulled me into a trance. Throughout that white winter after my older brother Jason had been admitted to the hospital, I sat alone in his bedroom, my younger brother Gabe alone in ours while alone my mom simmered orange peel and clove in a pot of water on the stove in the yellow kitchen, filling the house with the warm scent of citrus and spice, magical because all in winter was scentless.
In that cold and white winter I slept beneath the warm winter blankets laid across Jason’s bed for him by my mom. I dreamed that it was spring, the ice and snow thawed, and my family had been reunited, but the lake of my town filled so that it rose above the grassy banks and flooded the town we lived in, the town of my childhood. In that cold and white winter I was tormented by dreams that seemed like memories, and memories that seemed like dreams. Nothing was real. Everything was real. While I slept the snow still fell outside and it was the silence of a dying boy falling and it fell like a pall over our house on Wilson Avenue.
Aromas of hong shao rou—red braised pork, anise, rice wine—assail Farmer at the door. Three months of vegetarianism have obliterated her tolerance for meat, just as decades of barbarous honesty have obliterated her mother’s tact. Her aunties, at least, pretend ignorance: “What? Vegetarianism mean even beef? Okay. You eat the meat this time and next time I get it right.” But not Mama.
“Your friends don’t eat meat, make sense.” Mama sets the plate before her with finality. “But you can’t cook to save your butt. So for you, vegetarian is stupid.” Eeny meeny miny mo. Catch a tiger by the toe. But no, her mother is not that kind of Asian woman; isn’t a tiger, doesn’t have claws, never withheld love or enforced stringent discipline. In twenty-three years, Farmer has never once doubted her mother’s kindness. Mama’s just very, very candid.
John F. Buckleys' Roll Call for Our Somebody Else:
Here I am, not not any Other. American
pride without reflection. The red, white, and
black: blood, teeth, and cosmos.
Waterboarded, longtime resident with
questionable documents, coexisting with
cries of the outraged, with slick native neckties.
Here, coffee, kombucha, wheatgrass, and water
at daybreak, on the porch, under the bridge.
Maker and taker of mountains of historical
anguish. Here I am, that word and
its modifiers: ice, sand, prairie.
Bricks in the air and a shotgun with beanbags.
Here I am, too far Oriental, too far Occidental.
Here I am, forsythia in the wilderness. Here,
scant body hair at a delousing station.
Grandspawn of Hegel, a dialectic in unity.
Here I am, with truth, in truth, of truth,
not an outgrowth, but the cool side of the trunk.
Here, baklava after bratwurst and ramen.
Here, the whistle commanding police dogs.
Two hundred pounds pulled behind
a pickup truck. Here I am, praying sincerely,
praying all wrong from the vantage of
slapstick voices, slotted eyes. Working for
fractions of marbles. Here, the skin, here,
the flesh, here, corps with ambiguous phalanges.
Sewing the fists to designer gloves, watching
my fingers bleed. Here I am, holding a hand
that I may not, holding a hand out,
withholding. Here, history cleaving
tongues, history cleaving to tongues,
axe and the solder of centuries,
rust on the lips, dirt on the palate.
Chad B. Anderson's But All This Comes After:
The girl and boy stroll along the path curving through the trees to the river. They hold hands. He apologizes again for forgetting the blanket, the condom. She shrugs. A large Virginia is for Lovers tote bag swings from her shoulder. In the bag is a journal clasped shut with a rhinestone. In the journal are sketches of trees, hands, and an abandoned tractor in the pasture where the boy’s truck is parked now; a packing list for college; an account of her mother’s tongue-lashing when she lost the crucifix necklace she’d gotten for her birthday. She had shrugged then, too.
The boy drops the girl’s hand and his fishing gear to lift a fallen tree branch from the path. He refuses the girl’s help and drags the branch into the grass and thistle on the path’s edge. Two days from now, he’ll return here, alone and drunk, to chop the branch into pieces. He’ll drop the hatchet and nick his calf, leaving a comet-shaped scar.
The girl and boy reach the end of the path, emerge from the trees, and step onto the dock.
from Joel Tomfohr's The Inviolable Rule of Love:1
.
My dad hunched over the shovel, his back broad, and thrust down and withdrew the fresh, heavy, white snow. He had already moved out, but he came by the house on days after snow had fallen and cleared the sidewalks anyway. Again, and again with the chucking and crunching of the shoveling of the snow and it lulled me into a trance. Throughout that white winter after my older brother Jason had been admitted to the hospital, I sat alone in his bedroom, my younger brother Gabe alone in ours while alone my mom simmered orange peel and clove in a pot of water on the stove in the yellow kitchen, filling the house with the warm scent of citrus and spice, magical because all in winter was scentless.
In that cold and white winter I slept beneath the warm winter blankets laid across Jason’s bed for him by my mom. I dreamed that it was spring, the ice and snow thawed, and my family had been reunited, but the lake of my town filled so that it rose above the grassy banks and flooded the town we lived in, the town of my childhood. In that cold and white winter I was tormented by dreams that seemed like memories, and memories that seemed like dreams. Nothing was real. Everything was real. While I slept the snow still fell outside and it was the silence of a dying boy falling and it fell like a pall over our house on Wilson Avenue.
Nikia Chaney's the offering:
this my knee moves
in two direction see front
and back and wrinkles at
the wrong touch take
my knee and bend
it round your thumb
this my thigh pudge like
honey honey like
bread bread like
worth or coin take
my thigh and use it to
prop up your tent
this my rib poking
slim fingers down
my waist all curbed
gussied up take
my rib add it to
your soup
and this this my back my
sternum spine wall
straight my head my
mouth my neck take
my body and spend
to end of month
to food stamp run
out to rent to safe
place to doze to salve
after bruise to splint
to cracked of femur to song
use me my space breath
like smoke over ice all
cured sliced to served take
from me this casing until
you are cured and curved
and good and full
for soon enough just over
the yesterday we will all
turn to brand burnt nothing
pieces of wood to band with
the last of it to cuddle in
ruins of what we made
of this world and I need
you strong
this my knee moves
in two direction see front
and back and wrinkles at
the wrong touch take
my knee and bend
it round your thumb
this my thigh pudge like
honey honey like
bread bread like
worth or coin take
my thigh and use it to
prop up your tent
this my rib poking
slim fingers down
my waist all curbed
gussied up take
my rib add it to
your soup
and this this my back my
sternum spine wall
straight my head my
mouth my neck take
my body and spend
to end of month
to food stamp run
out to rent to safe
place to doze to salve
after bruise to splint
to cracked of femur to song
use me my space breath
like smoke over ice all
cured sliced to served take
from me this casing until
you are cured and curved
and good and full
for soon enough just over
the yesterday we will all
turn to brand burnt nothing
pieces of wood to band with
the last of it to cuddle in
ruins of what we made
of this world and I need
you strong
Want to read more? Order your copy today!