The First Toast
by Aria Aber
What is it that we owe to each other?
I drink to the moment that rises
like a calendula flicker
behind your eyelids.
I drink to the world
still veiled with the words
of childhood, our faces warm
in history’s collateral light.
from Hard Damage
I Tell My Mother About My Depression
by Eric Tran
She is ashamed of my seasickness,
her son, bled down from boat people.
We are kidding, of course: between waves
and prayers to Mercy, she swore
her child would never know
the damp of hunger in his bones.
She wanted him fat like clay
and just as soft. In college, I lost
ten pounds of myself and half
the words she sang to me as a baby.
The aunties cooed my new frame
but she was silent, both of us famished
for the words we meant. I say
I’m sad from sun to sun
and her response is a crisp
twenty for the quiet burger joint
we visited when I was young
and never talked, or didn’t need
words, our mouths and bellies
singing the same full rhythm.
Self-Care
Have you tried
rose hydrosol? Smoky quartz
in a steel bottle
of glacial water? Tincture
drawn from the stamens
of daylilies grown
on the western sides
of two-story homes?
Pancreas of toad?
Deodorant paste?
Have you removed
all your metal fillings? Made peace
with your mother? With all
the mothers you can? Or tried
car exhaust? Holding your face
to the steaming kettle?
Primal screamed into
a down-alternative pillow
in a wood while tree-bathing?
Have you finally stopped
shoulding all over yourself?
Has your copay increased?
Right hip stiffened?
Has the shore risen
as you closed up shop?
And have you put your weight
behind its glass door to keep
the ocean out? All of it?
Rang the singing bowl
next to the sloping toilet?
Mainlined lithium?
Colored in another mandala?
Have you looked
yourself in the mirror
and found the blessed halo
of a ring light in each iris?
Have you been content enough
being this content? Whose
shop was it?
from Customs
live in the layers 