The author smiles slightly, behind him a lush green background of trees

"About the Work" with JSA Lowe In our "About the Work" series, Natalie Tombasco asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read JSA Lowe's poem, "Dear Ventilator," in SER Vol. 40.2. The title of “Dear Ventilator” comes from the early days of the pandemic; I thought of it as, What machine helps you draw breath? What engine makes sure you stay alive when your body can’t hold out any longer? Most of what happens in this poem is

Dear Diaspora by Susan Nguyen Li Zhuang After a wave of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes during the pandemic, there comes a tide of the opposing forces. More than ever, Asian American poets are speaking candidly about the complex dynamic between being an “Asian” and being an “American,” as well as their personal experiences navigating these two identities. Joining talented poets like Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, and Victoria Chang, Susan Nguyen makes poetic conversation with

Here’s a Love Poem Sleeping together in bed, thinking about how much I love your tired voice, tired you, I call it, love the tired curve of your back, your tired breathing, love it when you roll your r’s and scrunch your nose, speak the ghost of your Spanish better than the Farsi I’m trying to learn now. How sometimes, all these years later, you ask if I’m mad that you’re sleeping. You’re doing it again now, faced toward me, worried and awake: are you mad at me for sleeping?

✧ Winner of the 2021 Gearhart Poetry Contest ✧ Selected by Rosebud Ben-Oni 「Obake Obachan」 Diane Yayoe Suzuki disappeared on July 6, 1985. The porch light flickers for thirty-six years. Somewhere a hen claws the dirt, thin legs scrambling to leave a trace. Maybe another girl dances alone in her room. Maybe we curl back our tongues to mimic the red glow beneath the smoke crumbling into a bowl of ash. Call this a prayer, call it a daily grief because we’ve forgotten how to shap

VR After Amazon laid me off I started wandering around my dying hometown mall pretending to look for a job. This was my teenage shopping concourse, so it meant something to me. I could redraw the mall’s color-coded map from memory. I knew the tragic histories lurking behind the crank-down gates of its storefronts. The Sam Goody had become an iPhone repair place. The Applebee’s had turned into a solid, immigrant-owned Mexican restaurant, until it was driven out of business by

At Love's Truck Stop, Laramie, WY Above gas pumps, the sky nurses a cheek purpled by rain as the dirt road snakes into prairie and, now a swallow, I graze each fence post, prong of barbed wire, bless it with a sharp wing. Matthew, it's spring, the season farthest from your death along this road, like any other, yet here you are, drawing wildflowers about shoulders like a cape when my wife, having braved the ladies' room, emerges unscathed again as a trucker leans on his horn,

Welcome to the Solar System, Welcome to the Woods The Earth rolls across its velvet dark without our notice. It leans shoulderwise, and our breath spirals in the cold. Over a fire, our faces unsettle in blocks— golden jaw, uplit brow. We talk about kidney failure, old homes, the systems falling apart, and further out in the dark, coyotes get up to their hungry revel. Those cousin voices pull at the dogs ghosting between our chairs, but we restrain them— remember, teeth, remem

Spine In Maine, at the edge of an island, the huge rocks went out, out into the icy water then suddenly down, like whales sounding, and I never saw a whale there, but I was twelve, thigh-deep, feeling that good cold that gets in your bones, makes you feel mortal, and up came a dolphin, just beyond my arm’s reach, its curved back a smaller island, shining wet, cloud-colored, and I was afraid of it, I wanted to touch it, I stood still, and then it moved on. Days later, somethin

✧ Finalist for the 2021 Gearhart Poetry Contest ✧ Selected by Rosebud Ben-Oni Pick What Story You Would Like Me to Become something that comes from the bottom of your mouth dredged up in the cow dung of your saliva a dancing girl with one anklet the skin trail from chest to navel layered in nut grass knot weed money piled at my feet voice clinking with moonlight hiding behind your front steps bury bird bones in your backyard and hope mine follows after churn nerves in