2 Poems
Tis a Mean and Dirty Little Town Nana says of Louisville, Kentucky, home of the sorghum molasses and melted butter on cornbread, the barefoot kids running down the hill: Say, who do you belong to? No one The brick reds, the blue tune Poppy played on guitar in the folding chair, The Fox, his favorite: [...]
Read more
3 Poems
Monkey’s Hair Speaks Pluck me from your skin, Sun Wukong. Hold me to your lips. I will change for you. When they ask where? I will say China. I will forget Michigan for you, Sun Wukong. I will dig my placenta from underneath the pine tree. My mother buried it there. I will eat it [...]
Read more
2 Poems
I Barely Know Anything about My Grandmother Outside the ravenous qualities of dust It is Missouri in the summer of 2014 a boy’s name tries to outrun the smoke Fails. Becomes it. Grandma is inside, all her walls greying at the corners across town my father sifts through dust finds his own name. [...]
Read more
3 Poems
During the Fall Bà ngoại’s knee is made of iron, and she waits for a dead man. No army could take out her legs, though still the sparrows lunge. Wait for me, says my grandfather, but Bà ngoại does not look back. At the hospital they replace her knee with any bar that will do— [...]
Read more
2 Poems
1991 AND WE FLEW FOR DAYS I spilled juice on the plane’s seat, stuck my fingers in the armrest ashtray, had to pee at all the wrong times. We flew for a wedding of relatives I never knew: me in an off-shoulder party dress, throwing petal to path, smile-nodding to no one. My lola wanted [...]
Read more
Shiva for Aunt Ruby
Aunt Ruby usually picks me up from Hebrew school, but today she isn’t here. It has been snowing for two days and this morning I broke the crystal sugar bowl in the kitchen, and Aunt Ruby isn’t here. I wait inside the entryway, pressed against the pale cinder block wall, while the other students file [...]
Read more
Scribble Scholar Was Here
Notes of a Vandal Academic
Read more
2 Poems
Gary's Bop Your bedroom door bolted, Trav took out the dope. Still in cellophane, he pestled it flour-fine with his Zippo and asked, Two or three? You were s’posed to with me. He cut two. Trav spoon-cooked it down. The bubbles white-brown. I bit the tail of my belt, and cinched my arm. Doors click [...]
Read more
2 Poems
anam cara i have the land of green plums in my knapsack, baby names for wild heather growing in a telescopic city like bethlehem where water & fire are sister wives vestal twins & the house i arson(ed) sits with its ashtray mouthed duende here i will meet you unstaunched hypnotic our bodies paradigm(ed) to [...]
Read more
MISI BIUTIKWEEN BOT
Read more
Kinfolk
—souls connecting and bonding, as one poet here would have it— are rooted in place.Are we from the same place? you might think when you meet someone who gives you a familiar sensation. My body is only one place my spirit has been over the course of the universe. *** I call my grandmother to […]
Read more
Welcome to Issue Folk
Welcome to Anthropoid’s Second issue: Folk. In this issue: A plague of beetles, ultimate grand supreme, big sky country, the ultimate flower, #notyourtonto, goldfish obituaries, and a woman grows gills. To us, Folk is a collective of the human landscape; its clans, tribes, kinships, and legacies. But the collective is made up of individuals. We are isolated within […]
Read more
