Desire

Have you ever split your mother open? Like a strawberry?

In the mirror my mother
molds her ridged clay body.
Wet fingers travel the map:
desert, thirst, ravine, cement.
She knows it’s late, she can’t shape
herself with a few drops of water.

Her hairbrush is tangled with want.
Her shoulders rest on ...

Red Fanta for the Gods

I lay my body down on a boat crossing the Chao Phraya, still thinking about what you said, slurping tom yum soup like the sun who composes the smell of your hair. And time is water. And time is water forming a river beneath the leaf of your ear.

It feels so easy now to just go with the flow. After sleeping with your sweeth...

Before and after, Chan si-naai remains unchanged. Her barrel-shaped body is as corpulent as ever, without any sign of emaciation due to despair, or bingeing due to depression. Her microbladed eyebrows turn darker with time, enhancing her expression when she purses her lips and lowers her head.

She wakes up at ten, exercises for fifteen minutes, heads downstairs for gro...

Yes, ever since the cat fell sick, my sleep has been shallow, so shallow; I’m terrified she’ll die while I’m unconscious. My husband used to work deep into the night: The hospital was too busy, with too many cases to see during the day, and he could only do the paperwork in the evening. My husband is a serious man. His brow creases at any given thought. Before we were married...

From University of Wisconsin Press | Who Killed Bambi? by Monika Fagerholm, translated from the Swedish by Bradley Har...