BY ALYZA TAGUILASO. 0 begins with an explosion. / 1 My great-great-grandparents were making love when the First World War decided to happen.

BY KWAN ANN TAN. This is a romance. A messenger rides against a backdrop / of moonlit sand on an Arabian steed.

BY ANNA TERESA SLATER. I want / the old man on the unicycle to listen / to my prayers.

my father was thirty-five when my mother / had me.

BY YVANNA VIEN TICA. Voice held / inside like a panic. / I could never erase / myself from the narrative.

BY JULIENNE MAUI CASTELO MANGAWANG. In a woman’s hands did I meet God branching into ancestors who sang beneath trees, sat among waterfalls

BY LEE WONHA, TRANS. BY GENE PNG. Because I was born in spring, I thought that I’d like to live in a place where it’s always spring.

BY SAKSIRI MEESOMSUEB, TRANS. BY NOH ANOTHAI. A beggar at the crack of dawn comes with an empty cup

BY MARK ANTHONY CAYANAN. My right foot’s chafed, we’re lost, and love’s a street with a name / I can’t pronounce.

BY KHAIRANI BAROKKA. not made for blake quotes and tinder profiles. / not squandered for bullets slung as attempts

BY TERESA MEI CHUC. the deer did not / stop running / leopards / climbed into trees / that could not / hide them

BY JACK MALIK. a diluted, unconfirmed mocha middle-east / skin—mixture of herbs & a medley of origin: