Do you get jealous? / Here, I walk / sweatless in the sunlight / and no one tries / to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

I am quick to enter when you’re gone, freeze at your alarm. I gave up knocking long ago.

on this shore, there is a body with an arm cut. / i fumble with the forsythia, that nudge of spring

what power is in my hands / my hands be power, be power, / my power is in what hands, my what / is power in whose hands.

In 1973 a black boy / was murdered on / my Mother’s birthday

At night, when Laura lay awake on her memory foam mattress, she listened and could not hear anything at all.

How do we claim the kind of joy that creates a rupture for passage through all the horror and despair?

Everything I need to hear / the slug churns out / in its stream of glitter

Despite my history of garden neglect, each year I delight in the sensation of newly turned soil.

Sirens wail all night on these streets / blanketed / (as in, humiliated) / by day’s hurried departure.

and vomit all / my happy-hour alcohol / inside that earwaxed / manhole

TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, creates the featured art for Issue 12: Before After

I could talk your ear off about the current state of Mexican-American literature.

My students & co-workers worry / if I return to America, I’ll catch COVID / or a bullet in my back.

Dust remembers what we try to forget, preserves the hidden, and keeps evidence in wait.