Mia Ayumi Malhotra is a Kundiman and VONA/Voices Fellow, and her poems have appeared in Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review, Drunken Boat, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the associate editor of Lantern Review and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.A Last History of Isako
Isako is lady with split shears under bed in case of emergency. Is lady knot red wool through thumb bow. Is lady grip ride and shank fist thrust into dark cutting edge first. Is still. Is viscera. pressed into body. Is waiting. Is time. Is breath grated against teeth like heavy object...
[Without Isako]
Without Isako there is only the present moment which folds into a bright star lodged in the eye. Without Isako I has nothing to say. I sits before a page voided of language. I drinks her tea. I folds her hands and places her head on her palms. I hears the door...
Isako like ash your sister drifts back to you
During the war Isako you tell me your sister her daughters half-Japanese turned the neighbors cold this memory Isako a thicket that cannot be breached how it rises to block the sky nights Isako you tell me you darkened the windows readied a pot of uncooked rice for the pit in your...
Isako Isako
Isako Isako are you leaving me. How much longer Isako will you remember me. Isako Isako is there an end and if so is it near. Isako Isako will I see you again. Isako Isako all that remains of you is bone. My hand on your back as you lower onto the...
