Poem "旦 [dan] daybreak" featured in Poetry Daily

Did you know there are 13 words for 'dawn' in Mandarin? This poem is part of a series where present each word as an experience, a landscape to traverse. I've always found dictionary translations of my mother tongue to be unsatisfying and limited, and so, I imagine a world where dictionaries are made of poems. Read here.

Thank you Poetry Daily for featuring this poem, and to Boulevard for first publishing it!

Poem Collaboration "Slant / Diptych" in Brooklyn Rail Magazine

Ever since I first picked up a copy of the Brooklyn Rail at McNally Jackson years ago, I wanted to be a part of it. Now thanks to Dr. Michelle Yee, this poem written in dialogue to her brilliant work on contemporary Asian-American Art is now out in Brooklyn Rail! I loved writing from Michelle's ideas of "in-betweenness," how to create and break boundaries within the "master's language," and how to celebrate the joys of being an Asian-American woman.

Read the poem collaboration here.

So inspired by Amy Sadao and Suzette Min's introduction to the series: "Abolition of a Category" featuring Asian-American scholars and artists. Let's remake the canon!

If you happen to be in NYC, please do pick up a print copy and send me a pic! Would love to see how it looks in real ink and paper.

Poem "Into the Moraine" in Michigan Quarterly Review

 

I'm lucky enough to live in a place where it's easy to go to the mountains. It's also easy to see and feel just how fast the glaciers are melting due to climate change. You will see a stark naked line where the greenery stops, and there’s only rubble below, all the way into the valley where ice used to be. You feel the pain of it, because that hiking path has been buried under a rockfall. If you ski down the Vallee Blanche, you'll end the route at least 12 stories below the train platform, and every step climbing up the stairs, skis on your back, your feet aching in those heavy boots, you're reminded of how much bigger the glacier used to be just a few decades ago.

This poem was one way to make that pain visible to the rest of the world. It's never too late to start.

Many thanks to Hannah Webster and all of the Michigan Quarterly Review editors for including it in their latest print issue, as well as Khaled Mattawa for the deeply inspiring foreword. Order your copy here.

Le Tour Glacier, France

Poem on Atlanta shootings, "Stones Between the Toes, I Walked," in Poets Reading the News

The shooting of eight people, including six Asian women, in Atlanta felt like an extension of the racist sexual harassment that I and so many Asian women are all too familiar with. Because the stereotypes of the model minority and the objectification of Asian women are considered "positive" narratives, we're told to take it as a compliment, when really, desire doesn't keep you safe, it puts you in harm's way.

The disease of these dehumanizing narratives is highly infectious and persistent. It was in Paris I was told I was too pretty for a Chinese, in Geneva where I've been followed home at night, in New York where I was groped on the subway. It doesn't matter if it was last week, years ago, or back to the 1875 Page Act, every one of those dehumanizing attacks stay with me. Forgetting makes it easier to live through, but I don't want to forget. It shouldn't take a mass murder for us to say it's wrong, it's all wrong. Now is the time for rage.

Thank you J Spagnolo and Sophia Marina for making my poem news. Read here.

Here are just a few of the brave, brilliant women who inspired me:

• https://www.vox.com/22336317/atlanta-georgia-shootings-racism-misogyny-targeting-asian-women
• https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-atlanta-shooting-and-the-dehumanizing-of-asian-women
• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/us/racism-sexism-atlanta-spa-shooting.html
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/cathy-park-hong-anti-asian-racism/618310/

Poem in European Space Agency's "Rosetta Art Tribute"

This little poem about the Philae comet lander first showed up in Maudlin House then traveled to Brooklyn Poets and it’s finally home with mama on the Rosetta Art Tribute site. Thank you European Space Agency for inspiring so many artists and writers around the world!

Poem "Market Value" in Writers Resist

On a fall day in 2015, the Chinese stock market dropped, which triggered a fall in all the other markets. I started thinking about the over financialization of our global economy. I started thinking about vegetable markets. I started thinking about what I knew then and how little I know now. Then this poem came.

Read "Market Value" on Writers Resist.

Poem "We The People Who March" in Writers Resist

Since I moved back to the US on November 8th, I have been searching for the right forms of resistance in this Upside-Down. Writers Resist is one form that has brought me motivation, enlightenment and a sense of unity. It's such a honor for me then to have my poem "We The People Who March" written for the Women's March on Washington as part of Writers Resist's 100 Days issue.

Especially after yesterday when the House of Representatives chose cruelty over humanity, putting millions of vulnerable Americans' health at risk, I needed a reminder of the hope and energy of the march, a first congregation of compassion and iron determination, back when the horrors ahead were still vague and uncertain. Now that so many have taken very certain forms, I need to, have to remember why we marched and why we'll be marching for the next four years. One of the protest signs that day said: "Rich White Man Rights for EVERYONE." Ok let's get that done. 1355 days of resistance left.

Poem "Philadelphia" in Offshoots Journal

My poem “Philadelphia” has just appeared in Offshoots Journal! I wrote this on a scrap of paper when my train broke down in Philadelphia, and I was waiting for my Dad to drive up from DC and rescue me. I started thinking of the long drive ahead for him, and about how he has spent so much time over the years driving me to school, piano lessons, to the airport when I left home, picking me up when I come home. All my life he has been rescuing me. He always seemed a giant to me.

Read more in Offshoots Journal 13, goes great with a cup of joe: http://www.genevawritersgroup.org/offshoots/offshoots-13/