V2.4
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Grandma’s House
As we continue to shelter-in-place, I would spend days and hours reflecting and mourning for a world that may never come back. I would create sketches of both my homeland and Chicago to release stress as I try to find a new “normal.” I think of being confined to our home, wondering how families in other nations are coping, losing business as supplies and customers dwindle, and a sense of loneliness that comes with isolation. Through it all, I still hope and pray that at the end of this, we would become better, to not take for granted all that we had, and to heal.
Basilica Minore del Santo Nino de Cebu
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
The Market
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
Shedd Aquarium
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
Visiting Hours (for Carole)
by Lani T. Montreal
photo credit: Hide Obara on Unsplash
The Mahasiddha Field
by Dwai Lahiri
During a time that has since been relegated to the annals of mythology, two groups of advanced beings, begotten by the same Father, but to different mothers cohabitated the world along with the human race.
Mi Papa II
by Eulalio Fabie de Silva
Hanging On
by Eulalio Fabie de Silva
Ascending / Descending to the White City Palace
by Eulalio Fabie de Silva
Stepping into the Light Reflections and realm of…
by Eulalio Fabie de Silva
Two Truths and a Lie: A Chained Hay(na)ku
by Lani T. Montreal
Emancipated
by Eulalio Fabie De Silva
Words to Live By
by Kim Fountain
My mother’s favorite question is, “They pay you to talk?” In my sweet 80-year old mother’s tone there are also two comments. One being, “So stupid that this is a job” and the other, “Wow, my child is smart”, but not smart in the sense of what it is I actually say, but in that by talking, I make money.
My mom left school at age twelve to work 15 hour days on her feet. She has never been to a meeting in her life and has never touched a computer beyond dusting it so, for her, my desk job and its meeting after meeting schedule is ridiculous because I can’t point to a final product. I do add in, that now and again, I need to say something of use or I don’t get asked back. By then though, she is off on another subject.
I know that there is not as much difference between us as she might think. It is after all, because of her that I figured out that words, used to trouble and even sometimes rupture power, would eventually carry me toward a sense of purpose.
Resilience
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
Our Land, Our Tribe, Our Lives
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
My Faith
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
Mambabatok
by Jessa Mae Mendiola
Standing Together
by Lisa Tomiko Macri
Sapiosexual Seeks Lumbersexual / Meandering Thoughts on Dating Apps
by Tina Bhaga
We’re snowboarding and jumping off airplanes, kissing babies, and kitted up real nice at friends’ weddings. The curated montage of ..
Growing Up Shiseido: Chain Stores, Beauty Magazines, and Whitening Cream
by Jane Hseu
My grandfather founded the Taiwanese branch of Shiseido, the high-end Japanese cosmetics company. The family story, told to me by his daughter, my mother, is that during WWII, while Taiwan was under Japanese colonization, my grandfather went to Japan to work, leaving his young wife to take care of their young daughter and his aged parents in the hardships of the Taiwanese countryside. For my grandmother, my mother said, life was bitter. After working at Shiseido in Japan, my grandfather founded Shiseido in Taiwan, Shiseido’s first overseas venture, and became a rich man. There were tens of millions of Taiwanese women to whom he could sell make-up and skin products.
photo credit: Chao-Yan on Upsplash
Alligator-Balligator
by Shu-Ping Tseng
This Mortal Coil
by Samina Hadi-Tabassum
Every night around 2 AM
Starting in early May
My son began sleepwalking
He climbed out of bed
And walked into our room
Where we lay awake waiting for him
photo credit: Samson Creative Upsplash
Ruins
by James Kao
Untying Knots
by Chiemi Souen
Jiji’s garage, there,
under the house. The smell
of dirt, mold, moth
balls, and cat shit.
Fingers clinging to the chocolate-brown lattice
under the mint-green house.
Eyes see through the filtered sunlight.
See:
Cardboard boxes filled with old
photos and papers, empty
sake gallon
bottles, bamboo
fishing poles, throw
nets, old garden gloves,
rusty sickles, rubber boots,
tabis, old rice
bags, shoyu cans, empty milk
bottles, a wooden
washboard, and lots of glass
jars filled with nails
and screws.
photo credit: Manuel Sardo Unsplash
Starlight
by James Kao
A Girl from Zanzibar, a Guy from Goa, and that Chap (from) Mercury
by R. Benedito Ferrão
I had finally arrived, but the start of this journey of a lifetime had already begun badly. Journeying from the metropole – London – to the once colonial periphery – Nairobi – I had made it, but my suitcase hadn’t. In it were the hand-written notes from the first chapter of my Ph.D. thesis and a copy of the book that that chapter was based on: Roger King’s A Girl from Zanzibar, published in 2002 and set in the 1980s. As I explained to the travel insurance company, no, I hadn’t typed up any of those notes and, no, I couldn’t reconstruct a year’s worth of work from memory. Perhaps it was the perfect postcolonial metaphor – the loss of a suitcase full of words between the empire writing back and a subaltern trying to speak.
photo credit: Alejandro Luengo Upsplash