by Yvanna Vien Tica

issue 77

1. a. when she mistakes a frog

For food she stores the children’s laughter
as punishment

1. b. she is beguiled by their mouths

how the tongues flickered like rabbits
flashing through snow

2. how can you blame her

when everything back home heated without warning
flooded without ceasing

3. look how she turns in her scrawled
alphabets for the lean curves of white girls

she inaccurately weighs herself an immigrant
which means less than a head of snow

rabbits

4. listen she is trying to change her skin her tongue

the burn of it tracing her body
like an aperture squeezed and scabbed

5. the first winter
tides over

6. a. watch how she gathers a vase full

of new English vocabulary to shelter her
she will freeze but she doesn’t

know it yet

6. b. how can you blame her

when she only knows the exothermic
how frogs burn to death

without fear.