A harsh reality hit me one day sophomore year of high school when a fellow classmate expressed to me that she enjoyed absolutely nothing about Led Zeppelin … what?! I couldn’t believe it. They were my obsession. I suppose I hadn’t really given thought to the fact that not everyone shared my taste in music. Moreover, some don’t even enjoy music at all (this still perplexes to me). While much has been studied ...

It saturates my bed sheets

and my pillows. It seeps from the fridge.

It coats the leather seats in my car, and wafts

with the breezes outside.

It flavors my Thai dinner

three hours from home.

It is on my clothes when the wind shifts,

my fingertips when I bite my nails.

Suspicious, I look over my shoulder

in public, sniff my sleeves deeply and often.

I wear too much cologne.

The smell is rancid ...

I am a woman

of these warm mountains and lacquered lakes

of the winter rains

My people are like the rich soil of this earth

dark and ancient and alive

My brothers and sisters

are responsible

for the world’s first alphabet

the Christian religion

and the very existence of humans

With pride in my every step

I stride with the queens’ blood in me

I do not forget the women

who ascended to the ...

These are my cloud lines. These my crow’s feet. I have blocks of linen, ordered, compressed. A pale blue fabric that sleeps across the sewing room table. I watch spools

Spin. Simple meters. Sometimes I decide to rain. Sometimes I just sit

back to watch the sun

set behind silhouettes.

I wear scarves in my hair, to keep it, pulled back. My arm gets caught in the machine.

Rips two new holes, I swear ...

With his mother’s sharpened sewing scissors, Rat Carter knelt close to the headstone and trimmed each blade of grass around it, where the mower missed. Long black hair stuck out from his head and brushed the stone, engraved with the name “Ralph James Johnson” and a short memorial about his happy life before they left for Vietnam, which Rat had memorized long ago. His swollen fingers barely fit into the holes of the scissors ...