NOREEN OCAMPO
Aswang Duplex II
This is not a dream. This is the future:
My mother throws me into the sun.
When my mother throws me into the sun,
wings erupt from my back like a blessing.
The wings at my back are her blessing.
In her prayers, I learned to trust my blood.
I trusted her prayer and learned my blood.
We cracked salt in the dark of our mouths.
We leapt into the dark, the salt in our mouths.
My wings reach further than my mother’s.
My wings always reach back to my mother.
The ocean beneath us is an endless body.
Our endless bodies and the ocean beneath:
This is not a dream. This is the future.
Moonrise at Sardis Lake
for Sumeet, Nate, & Mal
Let’s kill the park lights.
I’ll collect every sharp stone.
Look up and locate
the whitest pinprick.
Jupiter, bless our trajectory.
Help us extinguish
every light, even yours.
We want nothing tonight
but the red moon,
its sheen a giant swordfish
tormenting the water.
Jupiter, we’re coming for you.
We’re sharpening our jaws.
We’re grinding each speck
of your dust rings
into darkness.
Noreen Ocampo (she/they) is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Sundog Lit, Salt Hill Journal, and Taco Bell Quarterly, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. Say hello on Twitter @maybenoreen!