January 2025

The Morning Chorus,Buner, Khyber Pakhtun Khwa, Pakistan The lazy sun stretches across the skyAnd with it rises a haze of wood smokeThroughout the mountain valleyThe chorus of the world wakingUshers us into a new day The lowing of cows laden with milkSteady

A girl-child in a man’s worldBorn of the same lineageBut lower-birthed. A free spirit – a little fighterLouder, faster, bolderIn spite of being the ‘weaker’ gender. Not less lovedBut lower-rankedAnd always a bit outmanned. Not less specialBut never firstAlways just second or

Full inbox…how does the moon lightthe Earth in one night? Tangled morning moonthrough my sour-cherry blossoms…another woman breastfeeding Forest deepens…untangling my daughter curly hairwith argan oil First moon beams…the lotus sinksinto its past Aurora…God stirs the whole skywith a finger A swan

I hang white sheets,never crispsomehow wrinkledlike my crow’s feet,forehead,around my lips,crinkle on my nose,below my eyes,no matter how I try to iron,cleanse, tone, moisturise,the folds come back. White swaddles, burp cloths,become beige,sand,hessian,almond.Almond eyes.Get the colourout.I tie the burp cloths together,plan my escape.

You smell of forgotten woollensstuffed in old closets, five roundsof radioiodine nearly scrubbing outyour inherent talcum scent,no more than a whiff of a life that was.I whisper-shout toward rowsof sterile doors, visits fromthree feet apart (prison or recovery),hoping my voice breaches the

I remember the game of knuckles we used to play as kids in the dirt lanebehind the old storage sheds, corrugated rooves lined with squished flesh of fermenting persimmons. I found it unsettling the way we keptdisembodied knuckles rattling around inside old

A round steel thali winks at me as steam arises from a bowlof curry, a stick of cinnamon floats like driftwood seekingwelcoming shores. Little fingers trace the faint etchings of a name engraved lovingly by a twice removed aunt. A pigeonwith eyes

I hope I find enough courage somedayTo tell the world or at least the people that care about meThat;I love the darkness but I fear daylight the most,Not like others, I hate sunsets just as much as I hate goodbyes,I hate loud

A Tanka Sequence Prayingall day & all nightto Godnever questioning whycancer invaded my life until the doctortells me what stage canceri have, my fearswill hang like dewdropson a bleeding heart pale gray cloudsacross the morning stari gatherstrength & couragefor my first chemo

I don’t remember my first English wordbut I remember all the Khmer-dubbed Thai moviesthat raised me in the living roomover the hum of sewing machines from the garage.Not a word of English was uttered in my homeexcept for MJ, Madonna and INXS.I

I amthe bowerbird of flameentranced by the rainforest almost indecent, you see beyond skindeeper than marrowdeeper in ghost laway strings let me nestle in your lung’s capillariestuck me in to your grey matter,I’ll make myself at home drink deepfrom the pulse of

A thundery, lightning struck, rainy evening. Water flowing from everywhere; the skies, water rankling the asbestos roofs of houses and pouring onto the streets, the gutters, the drains, the potholes on the roads …. And in that loud, furious melee, I spot