I try saying a prayer for a NICU baby
I hear her saying the Lord’s prayer to them while they squirm and bat away the sticky readers on their little bodies. she is gentle. she has the patience only a mother could have. no matter how many times her children have kicked at her stomach and cried she has always come back to nurture them. she smiles at them and says, “Amen.”
Do Things Well
Iya Chinyere was having a bad year. Her business was not doing well, her daughter’s school fees were past due, and her husband had finally left her for a mama-put owner on the next street. It had been bad enough when he had simply been sleeping with one of the maids of the rich family next door; she had resented that woman’s superior tone when she told Nneoma that she needed to “control her husband,” as if she handpicked his affairs.
China Patterns
In London, your new apartment has one room, two toasters, and no locks on the doors. Your children’s three little heads knock against one another in a twin bed as they sleep. A tall man with rosacea spits on you at the bus stop. Another grabs his crotch and calls you señorita.
“The stories of working class women of color are under-documented.”
An Interview with Angie Cruz
On Paris, Istanbul, and the Shape of a Story
An Interview with Ayşegül Savaş
Four Poems by Sokunthary Svay
Jungle Crossing, 1980