February 08, 2022
GATEKEEPER
I’m riding with my father in his truck when he recounts a story—
One night, cuándo estabas pequeñito, you asked me where your mother was.
You couldn’t find her anywhere in the house.
I couldn’t have told you then, of course—
You wouldn’t have understood, but your mother was crossing back from México after visiting family for a few days.
Technically, she wasn’t allowed to leave ...
February 01, 2022
Caged Hare
From here the sky is a distant thing, whiteas the curtains, which move despite the lack of breeze,the way the tree tops used to bend,blending their tips like fingers, touchingone another like shy friends. I dreamI am dusted with the dry snowjust now featheringthe ground. From there I would see the steamof flakes dissolving as they meetthe sun-struck rocks. They release heatlike laughter. The surprise of ...
January 25, 2022
White Sands
Most people wouldn’t think of southern New Mexico as a place a person might go to lean into their queerness. San Francisco or New York, Paris or Berlin, certainly, but an alabaster expanse of Southwestern desert that abuts a U.S. military missile range? Seems unlikely. Yet, drifting among the white sands of the arid New Mexican desert was exactly where I found ...
January 20, 2022
Pleiades congratulates Mee Ok Icaro, winner of the inaugural Prufer Poetry Prize, selected by judge Kevin Prufer. She will receive an award of $1,000 and her winning poem, “otherland,” will be published in the Spring 2022 issue of Pleiades.
Mee Ok Icaro is an award-winning memoirist, poet, and essayist. She placed as runner-up in the Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Contest, and was a finalist for the Scott ...