He doesn’t dance with me like that, Mom. He trips over my toes and splashes cranberry juice on the floor and I love it. I slurp it off of his New Balances.
Out of My Head and Into My Body: Why Gardening Makes Me a Better Writer
It is equally easy for me to fantasize about being a writer as it is to fantasize about being a plant person. These fantasies of lifestyle and values echo each other. It is romantic until you must edit. It is romantic until you must weed.
This is Not a Place of Honor
Deep in the strange forest—half dead and sprinkled with the bones of long extinct creatures—was an even stranger nest. It was large and rotting, parts of it collapsed and covered in foliage. But it was The Mouse’s favorite place in the entire forest. The large nest was full of the prettiest rocks The Mouse had ever seen. These rocks were flat and could be pulled open and they were full of leaves. The leaves, in turn, had colorful markings on them. The leaves were mesmerizing, fascinating, and oddly delicious. On occasion, the markings looked like things The Mouse had seen. Sometimes, even The Mouse themself would be in one of the rocks.
The Robot-Dogs at Paris Fashion Week
Of course, de la Fontaine’s original story was not so full of promise and potential. At the end of the original tale, the wolf (obviously) kills and eats the lamb. The moral has something to do with the power politics between an innocent being who finds herself defenseless against an unforgiving aggressor. Coperni does, in fact, note this discrepancy between the original story and their robo-version in their artist’s statement about the show. They do not, however, acknowledge the irony.
Light Poems
This moment is outside of time
Ironic cause that’s what i’m needing
To teach you
Pleasure I have in my veins
This planet rewinds everyday just
To feed you
How can I be of service?
Burn me up, Wave me
Listen here patiently
Lessons entwined in my roots
Plant me within your mind so nervously
Last Call
You motion for another martini and down it quickly. What number is that? Three? Five? Why hasn’t He noticed you yet? You’re drunk but not yet sloppy. You’ll leave before that happens. Catch a cab, stumble up the stairs to your fourth-floor walk up. You pick up your cell and your fingers move slowly but you put a note in your phone with the name of the bar you’re at—sober you will appreciate the breadcrumbs.
Interview with Gina Walker and The New Historia
This is the work of The New Historia: to summon women deliberately left out of history and discover them and the shards of information about them that can be found. As more and more female actors are made visible, another narrative of the human experience emerges that is more inclusive, accurate, and just.
Various Poems: A Collection of Poetry and Photography
shirt button open
revealing breastless chest
breathless lungs
sternum
Solo Travel
I’ve always felt like a social butterfly, an influencer, the life of the party, etc.—but I’ve also always felt alone. I love my friends and family, but I covet my time alone, which is why I enjoy solo traveling so much.
No One Wants to Write Poems About the Proletariat Anymore
I want someone to see me./
I want someone to know/
it ain’t easy.
Notes of My Native Language
A common question I get asked by both Asian and non-Asian people is: “Do you speak your native language?” With the expectation that I’ll say, “Yes, I speak the language of whatever exotic ethnicity I look like.”
America
If I met America at that bar on 8th St, I wonder if he would correct me
And tell me that’s not his preferred pronoun
Beauty is A Bad Investment, But I Can’t Stop Buying
I think it’s foolish not to appreciate the creative aesthetic of beauty. Beauty is literally some women and femmes’ livelihood and often beauty is the job that will pay most when other jobs are still overrun by men. The question shouldn’t be is beauty worth or time, but rather what you’re getting out of beauty.
Poems by A. Trufanov – Vol.2
I came to say,
That I love you,
But instead, you gave me nothing
That I could hope for.
Terminal 3
I daydream a lot about floating in the air. A slow, sort of dead man’s float across the sky. This doesn’t make much sense to me because I don’t like planes. Or swimming. I prefer concrete over carpet. Analysis over meditation. So, the floating in the air thing—well that is a little crazy. A contradiction to my nature that feels oddly good.
Drift Away
I found I was still able to evoke emotions and capture beauty. It was safe. It was comfortable, and I never had to look away. Rather than feeling lost, I felt that I wanted more and could do more. I began to see the clouds as art, as the way they might look or could look. I saw them as paintings, as layers, and eventually, some as abstracts.
Shitty Luck
Supposedly, there is only a .02% chance of getting crapped by a pigeon each time you venture outside. But my chances seem to veer closer to 100%.
Powdered Donut Days
“Addiction is all or nothing thinking,” my father told me, “like your battle with depression. You either pull yourself together or completely succumb to the sadness, never leaving your bed. All or nothing thinking, the hardest and most manipulating kind of reasoning.”
So Long, Farewell My Child
“Mama,” you’ll say. “Mama, Mama.” And I’ll be the one to blame. Taking a second fall that never pushes back against a tide of shits and mouthful of fucks. Nameless and easy to point out the pangs of absence and guilt. Useless and replaced with something even more robust and diligently cared for.
The Depths To Which We Sink
It lies in their souls. That Earthly promise of life beyond the flesh and ascent into the sky along an arch formed by rain. It is only the drowned—buried under the seafoam corpses of our ancestors—whose souls remain in the sea.