They are not a flagrant generalization. They are the deranged reflection of / our centuries long struggle.

My culture started a revolution that traveled across the world / My culture brought the world together

She high-steps it in front of stores she cannot easily enter, but she is happy because she has fallen for a young man who likes to drive fast. One day my father will go too fast.

why when I gaze at your / flawless ebony skin / against starched white collar / I visualize unwavering courage

the divisions we now feel through race were only divisions / of class, education, this church from that church, / the churched from the unchurched—

When we got home, / my mom schooled me on the word and its history, / how it caused our ancestors’ misery, / it was no longer a mystery.

I'm using the title/phrase to denote the culture shock I am experiencing while I live here, and all the things nobody ever told me. To be honest, maybe I knew some things, but there is no knowledge like living it.

When you put your twists into two buns, realize that you look like Minnie Mouse, Sailor Moon, Princess Leia and any other fictional character random white men can think of to call you from a 20 foot distance.

If I am being honest, it has been a pretty rough year in our home. There have been more downs than ups and my wife and I have failed to see eye-to-eye on many occasions. It seemed when something would happen, rather than talk we yelled. We would forget the love we promised one another and seek to destroy one another with barb after barb of scything insults and profanity-laden missiles aimed at the other’s heart.

I, too, came to this website because I’ve been asked to perform an archaic notion of femininity for a friend’s wedding. Isn’t it funny, how we’re doing this for love? Isn’t it funny how we squish ourselves into an untenable form—cheap fabric and all—so that other people don’t get bent out of shape? 

In the PI, we played basketball. Filipinos love basketball. I towered over cousins. I outweighed them by thirty to fifty pounds. I was Shaq on the clay court. We made “family” bets for two-liter bottles of sodas. We made “secret side bets” for 1000 pesos, ten dollars. Opposing teams shouted, malakas siya, talking about my strength in the paint, then they shouted, mataba siya, calling me fat as I used my body to push them out of my way.

Oh how I yearn to breakthrough the stillness of your ashes to give you this poem and to tell you how sorry I am that my love was too fragile to carry the weight of your tears

I am not overcome to give love, which sometimes feels a roomful doing / no one any good. Only randomly leaking out. A double tip for a harried waitress, / an overly-long thank you, that embarrasses my wife…

I pictured it, my heart:  an ornate Victorian cage hanging from arched roof ribs, swaying gently. I knew that the gasping bird inside wasn’t the problem; she was the sentinel canary. But no one else seemed to understand this. How could I gently release the rope suspending the steel bank safe of stress without crushing myself underneath?

Pain, and in particular female pain, is often not taken seriously. My hysterics, pre-diagnosis, were often written off as typical adolescent craziness. As I got older, it became apparent that I had a problem. More specifically, I was the problem.

Maybe these are just expiration myths that help / us close up shop, help us turn the sign from / open to closed, a way to keep on living even / as we’re confused about what shop we’re in. 

we can bind together these sheafs of existence / into a library of shared living / and together into the forward hurtle / and bumpy turbulence of days and weeks and years / just...be.

Three. Two. One. Let it go. Feel the air rush as you fall down for what seems like eons. Free fall forever. Then once you land, breathe for the one second you get before you rush down, just to jump off another cliff, the cliff of adulthood.

In mid-September, my body itself became a breakthrough. My vaccinated body, despite all odds, was hosting the virus it so forcefully fought against. My body, healed and biking again, was ready to dance again. But for 10 days of quarantine, all dancing was confined to the small space in my room between my bed and my desk. The only option was to dance like nobody was watching because nobody could. 

we refuse / to consider death while we live, citing how / we are consumed with life and won’t seek / the living among the dead;