“He was a good father,” she recalled
of her late father

who had burned other fathers

First published in The Inflectionist Review, 2026

Written after reading a Guardian interview with the daughter of a Nazi officer. I was quite disturbed how she described her father as a wonderful father, even though he committed terrible crimes right next door.

Cross-border entrepreneurs of Tijuana
scour the rock-bottom remnants 
of U.S. thrift-shop stock.

They bid for televisions aren’t sure to work;
torn couches, blow dryers, food processors.

On the asphalt left behind-- useless items:
a bowling ball, golf bags, old unhinged suitcases.

Their weather-beaten vans hold the items with cords
and drive through the I-5S freeway 
toppling six, eight, 11 feet high:

beach chairs
rugs
artificial plants
lamps
dishwashers
bed frames
sofas
solid-wood dining room sets

But at the border checkpoint, 
where San Diego’s poorest neighbor watches 
from behind the fences, 
the officer, sunglasses slipping 
down his long thin nose, 
waits for the vans to stop 

and tells them to unpack 
the mountain of goods 
for inspection. 

Earlier version first appeared in Vanilla Press, Issue 4, 2010

It’s painted on a canvas soft as velvet,
a young woman’s face in pink.

Behind half-closed lids,
crowned with long lashes,
deep-set eyes of bright blue—

dear, simple,
her stare compels
until a flock of lust,
so thick,
darkens the irises.

The silent charm once reigning flutters,
wings beating thunder,
drumming the heart.

Dead air ripples
beneath an untouchable breath.

An earlier version appeared in The Missing Slate Journal, Issue 2, 2011

We were in the bathtub
after school
when no one was home.
We filled it to the top.

Our clothes at our feet,
you stood
bare as beech wood—
a child queen.

Thighs of tusks,
neck of a dipping swan,
breasts like unhatched eggs.
In the mirror, I saw

my own reflection,
broken twigs pieced together
in imitation of a boy.

First appeared in Eunoia Review, 2010.

When the moisture hanging in the air
condenses,
while you are traveling on a train,
closely watch these chilly nights
for the cloudless sky, sometimes means
a killing frost.

And when one night while breathing
open air, on a sleeted road, 
somewhere lost
between aisles of frosted evergreens,

your nerves swell
then burst apart.

First published in Monongahela Issue V, 2010

A memory housed in alcoves 
like jeroboams of champagne.
She’s weightless 
on her ballerina toes.

Paprika, cinnamon, and ginger
with a drop of lemon dew
three savory syllables of a name
brought to my parched lips, lying
on a bed of buds for summer’s play
like two icebergs in paradise.

First published in Monongahela Issue V, 2010

when the wind passes, glass chimes sing
and dead pigs on hooks sway side to side,
their stench drawing hungry boys 
with tongues out and bare feet 
stepping through black, boiling blood 
that runs along the road
like a flash flood, carrying off
cigarette butts,
needles,
orange peels.

The ants and roaches drown, 
but fleas hole up in trees,
caught in spiderwebs, blinded 
by white sunlight.

First published in Eighty Percent Magazine, Fall 2010

In the sacred home of every woman, every girl, the paper flesh breaks down, strip by strip, it separates itself from the walls, melts into a calm stream, then whirlpools down the drain — but I can clean it up with pure white cotton pads, wipe off the mess, wash away the streaks left behind, or I can collect the rubies in a cup up to its brim and carry it over to the sink, dump it like a glass of red wine that's been left out from last night's party, then sanitize the surface and use it again and put on clean panties, because where I am the water comes out clear from the faucet butㅡ​

Not all tributaries flow in every vein of earth and reach every home. There, water reeks of gasoline green, mud rot bones like open graves and unflushed toilets. No cotton pad to soak up the blood, but a rag of an old shirt or a quilt or a tablecloth or even baby socks. They wash it with the rain from the sky, if it rains at all, or if it doesn't rain of phosphorus — they wring it dry and use again, or use nothing at all, letting the red stream flow to mix with the mud rot caking their feet; bracing simultaneously against the fiercest heatwave of a desert; the whiteout in the tundra; then they run away from home,
away
away
away ㅡ but other eyes still track their faint red footprints, and smell the iron dust clouding the skyㅡ

I can turn the faucet hot or cold, on and off, wash my hands, dry them with a towel. If I forget to bring a pad with me, a friend can dig through her purse and give me one, or if she can't, she'll dig out her car keys and say, “There’s a store around the corner we’ll go pick some up.”

First appeared in Blood + Honey, 2026

ambient sound

I used to speak with two tongues,
split at the root in my mouth
when I was a kid.

One side spoke
the language of a village
in a province
no one could find on a map;
the other spoke
the language from a white kingdom,
now republic,
but we're all still its subjects,
some of us second tiered,
and only speak with one tongue.

I was told
that made us better
than the ones
who look like us
but are not us
because we're on the north side
of the hemisphere
and they're on the south side
of the hemisphere,
the underworld.

My mother and father
stitched the split,
said it was a wound
that needed to be fixed,
because two tongues
made me look like
a brown serpent
in the eyes of the whites
in a country that says
they welcome all—
bring me your tongueless.

[First appeared in The Quasar Review, 2025]

ambient sound

Good weather lives in one seasonㅡ
stretch of blue patched
with unraveling cotton threads,
sprinkling yellow gold dust
on our eyelashesㅡ
South Bay summer in San Diego.
That's one reason, perhaps the only
string that ties anyone down to the root.

I remember the stained-glass windows
of Saint Charles,
light trickled through
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus
and their pet lamb
and the Cross I held up
down the aisle to the altar
where the Father tried to trip me once,
his side eye smirk, then stone-faced
as he fed his parishioners
Christ's white skin flakes.
Weird. I thought he'd be suntanned
from Bethlehem.

Not far from church
was the drive-in theater,
we went once as
that prescribed nuclear family
of four ㅡ father, mother, son and daughter
in one car behind another family.

Now showing a double feature:
Waterworld & Excess Baggage

We got in line for popcorn,
the soles of our shoes made kissy
noises with the floor
burnt kernels, chewed-up gum, chocoballs
smooshed up like muck
that stuck to our heels,
and someone braided ribbons
of cigarette smoke in my hair,
but we got our bucket of popcorn
the bottom soaked, almost collapsed
in the deluge of heart-attack butter.

We never went again,
instead Papa drove me and my brother
to Hollywood Video and I picked out
for the millionth time: Event Horizon
while he tucked a VHS tape under his arm
hid it from view but I found it later
under the bedㅡ
Cindy Crawford's Home Workout video.
Funny. There wasn't enough space
in our little apartment
to stretch and bend and do somersaults
like a slinky.

South Bay summers in San Diego meant
shoveling halo-halo, syrupy shaved ice
melting on our tongues, cooling our palates,
or sometimes on scorching days,
getting lost in the Oasis
with cold drops sliding
off our sticky lips
from the coconut paletas
to guide us back home.

The peak of South Bay summer
was a slow drive down to the pier
in Imperial Beach, where
if we turned our heads south
we'd find ourselves eye to eye
with Tijuana.

Back then, the sea air
didn't scar our lungs
with chemical burns,
the water didn't slough
the flesh off our bones.

Back then, we swam,
we buried our toes
in the hot sand,
blended into the earth
became sand angels,
rose again and wandered down
the halls of sandcastles
as John Philip Sousa bellowed
the Golden Jubilee across
the Sun and Sea parade
where color guards danced
and the festival Queen's
butterfly kisses
landed on our cheeks.

She waved hello,
farewell
to us, her loyal subjects.

On the 4th of July,
we hopped back into the car,
a family of four
once more
a drive to Silver Strand,
where we breathed in
fresher sea salt and kelp,
the blue-red exploding stars
seared my eyes
swelled my heart,

my home
like smoke wisps,

a dream
I wake from.

[First appeared in Eunoia Review, January 2026]

ambient sound

​a teen fell into
the industrial-size meat grinder,
literal not metaphorical
for our hungry mouths
that churn and chew and spit out
our young onto epoxy-coated concrete,
our bloated bellies never satisfied,
demanding more, an ever-expanding hunger,
we believe in perpetual economic growth.

So we ask him, if he could also please
cover the graveyard shift tomorrow,
because another fell into a bread mixer,
we found her this morning,
we'll send her parents bread at the funeral,

but he doesn't answerㅡ
he's already dissolved
into the wet splash of bucket and mop
cleaning up tomato sauce and meat chunks,

we'll give his family a lifetime supply
of our signature frozen burritos,

we've fed billions,
and we'll feed billions more.

[An edited version first appeared in Radon Journal, Issue 11, 2025]

Sound effect

for too long
​
your internal clock melts
like a Dali pocket watch folding
back, going limp without bones,

second hand becoming minute hand,
minute hand becoming hour hand,
hour hand becoming time eternal,

your memories becoming dreams,
new ones as illusions,
myths you decipher to yourself
from floating symbols—
falling before your half-shut eyes,

as browning leaves crumble
into sands of gold
drizzling in summer rain,
scratching your cheek
with claws,
you’re bleeding,

you think you hear them
with your tongue,

you taste petals of cherry blossoms
in spring with your fingers,

in winter you see yourself standing
over your sleeping self:
a pale, wingless, hairless bat.

Finally, when you wake up
from the cave, light singes
your eyelashes—
but now you can see:

the weather is clear.

[First appeared in Eunoia Review, 2025]

ambient audio