Sam Roxas-Chua is the author of Fawn Language (2014), as well as Diary of Collected Summers, winner of the seventh annual Missouri Review’s Audio Competition in poetry. Born in the Philippines, he is at work on an MFA in creative writing from Pacific University. Roxas-Chua is the owner of the Poetry Loft in Eugene, Oregon, where he lives.

A Collection of Eyelashes on Paper

by Sam Roxas-Chua

If I blew them off the page
they would haunt me tomorrow,

follow me to the courtyard
where my son


pokes a fish with a stick
and I have to tell him


about the dark boat
that milked a galaxy


into my heart.
My counsel will be clear:


he will take the blood-pouch
from inside the fish


and pierce my name
on his arm in owl-scratch script.
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