January I Issue: Poetry Roundup

Each issue we feature pieces of prose and poetry from Asian women around the world. Here are this issue’s pieces!

“Looking for 故乡, or home, or something else” by Angela Dong

It is so humbling  
To be a foreigner in your homeland 
To meet strangers that should be family 
And to trip  
over a language that should be yours 
So I find myself homesick for places  
I have never called home 

And nostalgic for places 
I have never visited 

I wander the world 
Finding comfort in foreign lands 
And unfamiliar tongues 
Until airports become my second home 
(My first is the Earth itself) 
As I continue searching for 
A space in which I truly belong


Suitcase by Isabel Lee Roden 

My mother repacks my suitcase for me - 

I did it once, I am good at packing. 

But not so good as her. 

She re-rolls each shirt tightly, tightly wound, and crammed elegantly into a square. She finds symmetry 

where I am more comfortable playing building blocks 

with my own brand of disorder. 

I pack and the suitcase nearly bursts with keepsakes, 

dresses, flip flops. 

She packs and my whole life flattens out - all but 

disappears. 

As if she has made me smaller. I am easier to travel with now. 

I was already all but packed, I did not ask her for help. 

As if the lack of a request holds any weight. 

She shows me how to fold my denim jeans 

so that they will lay flat and unobtrusive. 

She does not realize 

she is showing me how to take the work out of my loved one’s hands. 

We say “let me do that for you” and it is as close as we can get to 

“I love you.” 

We say “let me do that for you” and it means 

“I think you are incompetent.” 

For the women of my house, these sentiments are not mutually exclusive. 

We are a legacy of women who believe they know best because they have always had to. Women who feel a responsibility to love because 

love has always come with responsibilities. 

We say “let me do that for you” because a long time ago, 

though not as long as I might think, 

my grandmother packed all our history’s hopes in a suitcase, 

because it is what she was taught she owed to her future. 

So that she could build a house, so that my mother could fill it. 

This house, packed heavy with the weight of 

responsibility. 

Nearly bursting with what we owe to each other. 

More than enough to fill a suitcase.


“To the lover…..” by Ashritha Muppidi

Amusement strikes my brain cells, heaviness strikes my heart.
What a joy it is to offer you my thoughts, what a pain it is to fear they’d be less amusing to you.
On rainy days (read: every day) I have the urge to be entangled within you and not make sense out of this world;
some days you’re too much, other days I need more of you.
I slip fast into the cascade of thoughts, and never for once, the depth of you was diluted;
I don’t promise, I cherish, I cherish till you last, till this hurt becomes normal and till your fragrance smells like home.
It was not easy knowing you, it was some days boring too. 

Meet me in paradise, under the stars above the chaos, let's live a lie this love has to offer;
Your bare chest was a burial ground and I wanted to die before being born.
This love of ours knows the space we fit in well, yet, gives us voids we devour till death


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"If The Capitol Were a Woman” by Daniela Sow

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The 2020 Issue: Poetry Roundup