Dia De Los Muertos Festival

This year, being busy Halloween weekend, I wanted to check out Phoenix’s Dia De Los Muertos Festival. It’s part of my cultural heritage that I never really did much with growing up nor as an adult up until this point and I wanted to change that. From the description of the festival on their website, […]

144 Character Poems: Set 2

A Slender Man He is so slender, like the lengthening Spring days. Thin as the shadows, glowing like the sun. Let’s see how we can make him break. Composed 03/05/14 Air Dried Dirty water cleans our clothes constantly assaulted by wind, dust, and earth, drying snaky river beds into our creases, seemingly impossible to remove. […]

The Old Man at the Rest Stop

He haunts the two story grounds where all the buses and some of the private cars go to rest, shuffling along and always on the search for salvageable goods. His coat is two sizes too large, lightened by the dust of the earth that is slowly decaying into nothing but desert sands and irritable grains […]

27

If I had lived 100 years ago, I would have been dead in 10; Plucked away to fight in some foreign war in a land that, if people squinted at me to blur the colors in my face, they would swear was my own, or perhaps eaten away from the inside by disease that festered […]

Traditional Mongolian Symbols

There are many patterns and symbols present in Mongolian life that have existed in the country for hundreds of years. You see them everywhere: On clothes, cookies, doorways, buildings, etc. Knowing what they mean and why they are put where they are can give you a rare insight into the inner workings of Mongolian culture. […]

Outside it is Raining

Falling above the lyrical moonscape Of tattered iron wills and hem-less capes The king of hearts finds himself dead again. Ashes and soot from false volcanoes flow In neon patterns that shape what I grow Гадаа бороо орж байн. (Gadaa boroo orj bain) Silence consumes Lazarus screams I hear When flames burn cold, driving ships we […]

Shapeless

Lives lost as lives often are, He stared across the dimly lit Cityscape as he reflected on The poverty of the soul That had recently stopped His otherwise flawless sprint Through the tall grass And wild flowers. In another life, another time, Or so it felt now, so distant, Happier days with a wife Who […]

The Reindeer People

In the northern reaches of the Mongolian taiga, there live a group of nomadic herders, known in Mongolia as the Tsaatan, or “Reindeer People.” For a project I did with other Peace Corps volunteers, I was able to travel and live at their camp for a good 10 days. Reaching their spring and summer camps […]

Insomnia

Faberge screams echo in Silk-shaded halls in the Broken palace that sits upon The hill prone to mud slides When torrents befall it. Pop music and barbarous taunts Filled her days and blinded Rusted nails sewn to her hands, Belted waist constricts Appetites unnatural As she waltzes off-beat Through the corridors. Halcyon storms tearing benches […]

Remembering 2012

I’m not one to do retrospects, but this past year proved particularly challenging for a particular community I am a part of. I’m a graduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, one of the greatest graduate schools with an international focus in the world. It is an honor and privilege to study with […]