Mama had just parked her Buick Regal in front of our red brick house. Even the row houses of north St. Louis sparkled in the warm spring sun. My sister Chung and I—both then in our mid-late teens—carried the grocery bags up the steps of the front porch, while Mama retrieved the mail. The keys rattled as I unlocked the front door, and we filed into the kitchen, Mama glancing at the bills and coupon fliers. As I reached for the light switch, I heard a rustling that rapidly crescendoed. Before I knew it, Chung had grabbed Mama by her hair and slammed her head against the yellow kitchen wall.

The Threads exhibition, open until October 22, 2023 at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, features textile art pieces created in response to poems.

I could feel my poem connecting with the art of the Threads exhibition as I read at its opening on August 26, 2023. The threads were pulling themselves through my body. Julian Kytasty’s masterful playing of a traditional Ukrainian instrument, the bandura, moved through me too. A word wrapped itself around each note. Each note wrapped itself around a word. The red yarn around me created “Boundaries,” which was the title of Aze Ong’s piece.

Our union president, Ronald, milquetoastedly knocks his gavel on the conference table. “Okay We have a quorum. We are just missing … okay … missing … Yolanda.”

“She’s on her way,” Ngoc says.

“On her way. Okay. We have a quorum. I will, now, officially, call the Bay Valley College Faculty Association December meeting to order at 9:02.” 

In 2003 I bought an expensive pair of bright pink cargo pants. Hear me out. I had just lost a massive amount of weight and was exploring my fashion. Who am I? Am I bright pink cargo pants? Maybe! These will be my fun pants, I thought.

I bought them at this boutique store on Newbury Street in Boston with my parent’s credit card. I get to say that obnoxious sentence now because a few years later I will essentially become an orphan with over $100,000 in student loan debt. I wore my bright pink cargo pants a few weeks later when I took a cab to see a neurologist who specialized in MS.