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TPCReview Issue 001

k tiao

actias luna

i keep having this funny sensation
inside my body. i think it is joy.
from experience i know that it is
dangerous to feel infallible, but
is freedom not delicious? me, i am
free, very free dairy-free gmo-free
gender-free. my room smells like my clothes smell
like someone else’s cigarette smoke smells
like loving someone enough to stand with
them in their cigarette smoke but not quite
enough to encourage them to quit.
i like feeling dangerous. i like my
limbs askew in body rhythm. i like
intimacy without sex. i like sex
without intimacy. i like release.
i like witnessing. a lump of garbage
shaped like a cat, wind blowing icy cold
up my sleeves, bodies nestled up near each
other, pleasure is so simple if you
let it be. as simple as stacked wooden
blocks, sweet cream on your tongue, music turning
over, hands belonging to another
unfurling your green leaf wings into light.

violet time machine

some days the crumb logic spins you silly turns you upside-down makes
you feel lost in sauce just a lone ravioli scooting around. but then, elina tells
you that you that she named a violet after you, and that now, violets are her
time machine and in fact, this reminds you that violets are also your time
machine, and sharing this from across the pacific reminds you that your
dad used to buy you c.howards from the pharmacy, that jean and i filled
pockets from the greenwood cemetery, that we made a violet cordial that
reminded me of my soapy childhood, swizzled it in seltzer, that ma loved
the color so tenderly in that spring, that she never threw out the syrup, even
when it oxidized, and that is proof that she loves me, and that in fact, poems
matter, and in this love, in this sharing of poems, we are reminded that we
might all be listening to the violets, hoping they might tell us something
new every spring.

k tiao is an artist and shape-shifter freshly graduated from UCSD’s MFA. they are working on a manuscript about transpacific yearning. you can find their work in Washington Square Review, Soap Ear, Impossible Archetype, Molecule, bitter melon poetry, AAWW Transpacific Literary Project, and CHIME zine.