if the wind caught open scars and distant checkbooks there was no indication it was broke

We made love in the kitchen, dinner cooked In the stove, and then burned in the stove. I don’t recall what the third mouth was doing As her first mouth kissed me and the second mouth Talked and inhaled and talked and exhaled.

One of three brothers, one of three sons, he tells me, one Sunday his oldest brother choked him unconscious onto the kitchen floor just to see what might happen.

Elsewhere. she plays dumb, prefers the old school dumpster meeting in silence. Or the local Pentecostal bad boy and his one-hour evening advice sessions. Or playing dutiful daughter, Or playing tad dumb.

A country of broken tiffin-boxes we are- If you come from my village for lunch at my city home let me know beforehand; we shall meet at Curry Road station, both you and I...

Both will be stuck with the tab at the end of the night. I’ve been the lawyer, so sure that I can argue down disdain; the doctor, trying to heal the broken at all costs. Nobody wants to drink alone, but everyone does.

My second sleep, where red, white and blue are burning, the ashes gleaning and glinting as they die. I wake to the carmine rays of dawn and fall asleep to the sound of fireworks outside. I cradle the ivory dove in its mourning, whispering, “Am I alive? Am I alive?”

My mother rationed it like electricity, food enemies had to be beaten, bombs avoided fires put out Love would be shown in a more practical way through duty, service.

The bleached armory of the sea Lay ever-washing on the shore In casques and blades and bulwarks. In your hand a gray medallion crumbles To powder And is claimed with haste By the wind

Spider plant is the wrong name for my immortal perennial. In all her newness, she remains the same tuberous roots that I touched with tiny fingers, eyes illiterate, but full of love.

They'll be tests, machines that spin famished tubes with eyes  like steam engines hanging in space, and no matter how deeply infrared you are, no matter how many mean dogs you put out front

the only observer of this war, a woman, she would recall, for years the haunting images of drinking blood from the enemies’ wounds a bestial attack on the body, long dead, of one of the defenders

a starless, smothering blanket of beastly odour. Pinned down, your mind sifts and sifts through the shock swiftly, recalling the ranger’s warning:               it always goes for your face, cover it with your hands, curve your body into a C, and be still;

on the backs of those who bow on the believer and the unbeliever on the protestant and the catholic on the anglican and the jew on the muslim and the hindu

My aunt’s house does not exist anymore the little white house with a secret door leading into the garden flooded with soft camellias the yard adorned with a magnolia tree

Ajji oiled and combed my hair for hours. She said that combing is kindness as though the small-teethed comb could catch and carry my worries, and not just lice. Call me prejudiced but the C words do not stick like sweat on my skin - choice, consent, calcium. I suffer from deficiencies of my own making. That's how marriages work, you say.

you the thump-thump bass as I drowned in the bellow of our ballad, worn leather mouthing words from neon lights. Skyline clumped beneath the white crescents of your nails; sprinkled into smog like glitter, these two lungs exhaling ten intertwined fingers and

Alison Morse weaves a heartbreaking narrative of garment factory workers' life through the scope of Human sufferings, paved with lack of accountability by owners and substandard working conditions.

Better still, there are Oranges in Europe and Grapes in South Melbourne and A man from the Northern suburbs with a belt that Wears studs and a tattoo I know better than to Question, who Offers me a coffee with half a spoon of sugar.

I thought I was Orpheus’s head floating down the Hebrus still singing, but I was not singing—

A teacher once asked if I lived on the dirty side of the Philippines, I had to think what she meant—if she meant a part easier to ignore homeless kids on the streetsides with cardboard blankets curled up like street dogs; if dirty meant poor meant eating rice with soy sauce ‘cause mama couldn’t afford meat;

Flowers I can’t name stretch over the lip of a windowsill to stare into the swooning sun. I will not sing, but I am tempted.