This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Palm Up, Fingers Curled by Abby Lewis (Plan B Press, 2023).
Content Warning: sexual violence
Snippets—I Can’t
“Sometimes I can’t tell if I like a girl as a friend or as girlfriend material.”
Snippets of a conversation overheard in passing while boarding the subway.
Sometimes I can’t tell whether I speak aloud or in my paper-thin head.
It does not help that things echo here in the chambers of Manhattan.
I can’t tell if I can hear correctly, if I can see the faces correctly.
Sometimes I think I see myself. Material becomes immaterial
like a chain of paper angels, wings severed with each gentle snip of the doors.
Abby N. Lewis (she/her) is the author of the full-length poetry collection Reticent (2016) and the chapbook This Fluid Journey (2018). She has two masters from East Tennessee State University, and she is currently pursuing an MLIS degree. Her creative work has recently appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Across the Margin, Black Moon Magazine, and Red Eft Review. Her book reviews can frequently be found on Chapter 16’s website. She lives in Tennessee, where she wears many hats as a librarian, educator, tutor, and reviewer.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Palm Up, Fingers Curled by Abby Lewis (Plan B Press, 2023).
Content Warning: sexual violence
Palm Up, Fingers Curled (Or, This is How it Happened)
I sit on my grandparent’s back porch, in a chair at their glass table.
Grandpa is on my left; my father across from him, to the right of me at the head of the table.
Grandpa is describing the recent abduction of a young woman.
It had been in the news a few days before.
My father had yet to hear the story— it wasn’t just an abduction, we learned;
two men had kidnapped, raped, mutilated, then murdered the woman. Grandfather goes into specifics, describing how the men had tied her to the bedpost and taken turns.
The young woman was young, a girl really, just sixteen years old.
Grandpa makes eye contact with me— then with his son as he relays the most gruesome details.
At other times during the telling, he looks down and speaks to his reflection in the dusty glass of the table.
His face, at those moments, has a look of incredulity, as if even he is shocked to hear the story he is voicing.
My father breathes the word “Jesus” at various intervals. He glances at me, on occasion.
The things he must be imagining— worst-case scenarios involving me in her place.
When I first sat down I had not known what they were discussing.
It was summer, early July.
Our entire family was over for our annual cookout.
I had expected the conversation to be light, airy, like biting into a slice of watermelon.
Instead, I sit down to hear him say one of the men had cut off the young woman’s left breast.
And I don’t just mean her nipple, he said. Her entire breast.
He holds his hand out, palm up with his fingers curled, as if that very breast was perched there in his hand.
The air around us grows oppressive.
I do not want to stay—to listen— but I also don’t want to stand and leave so soon after having just sat down.
So I stay. I listen.
Until my grandfather holds out that hand,
his palm a sign of wealth— all the years he has lived weaving a tangled tapestry across his soft, tan skin;
the shape his palm makes, as if he were offering his beating heart,
or if his other hand joins in, as if he were begging for mercy— but it is just the one hand, golden band reflecting the sun’s gaze. I look away.
Abby N. Lewis (she/her) is the author of the full-length poetry collection Reticent (2016) and the chapbook This Fluid Journey (2018). She has two masters from East Tennessee State University, and she is currently pursuing an MLIS degree. Her creative work has recently appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Across the Margin, Black Moon Magazine, and Red Eft Review. Her book reviews can frequently be found on Chapter 16’s website. She lives in Tennessee, where she wears many hats as a librarian, educator, tutor, and reviewer.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Palm Up, Fingers Curled by Abby Lewis (Plan B Press, 2023).
Content Warning: sexual harrassment
How Could This Have Happened?
“What’s your name?”
“Claire.” “Claire,” he repeats.
My name always sounded flat to me, but when he says it, he lingers on the vowel, drawing out the “air.”
It’s eerie, this feeling.
We stand in the middle of the double entrance to the Knoxville Public Library; two people, one coming—
one going.
“Where are you from, Claire?”
“It’s—” I pause, unsure how to evade the question. “It’s a ways away from here. You probably don’t know the place.”
“I know a lot of places.”
He smiles, sticks his hands in his pockets.
The library receptionist is watching us through the glass door.
I can’t stop glancing at her.
“How far away is it?”
My eyes are pulled back to his face.
“Oh, about an hour and a half,” I say, sure the information is useless.
There are a lot of places an hour and a half away from where we stand.
I inch closer to the second set of doors, which lead outside.
“We’re friends, right?” he asks.
I nod, my gaze on the door, hands clenched to hide the tremble.
I force my fists to unravel. “Sure. We’re friends, I guess.”
I look at him. He smiles again.
His teeth are thin and yellow, like a rat’s. They look brittle, as if they could fall out.
“I have a lot of friends who are girls. I met them the same way I met you just now. You should come over sometime—
to my place, meet them. We can all be friends and have a good time, together.”
I don’t respond.
I put my hand on the outer door, angle my body away from him.
The receptionist is standing now, watching.
The man on display with me does not appear to notice our viewers.
He moves closer.
“What are you doing right now?” he asks.
His voice is low. He is bent slightly at the waist, leaning his shoulders and face closer.
“Do you want to go with me to meet them?”
Them. His friends.
He lifts his hand as if to touch my face.
“I’m sorry,”
I stammer.
“I have to go.”
I push open the door, feel the rush of air and noise— loud as the blood roaring in my ears.
I look back to see him shake his head, turn away.
I nearly trip down the concrete steps. At my car, the books— thrown in the passenger seat. I climb in and lock the doors. Grip the steering wheel— not so hard. Breathe.
* * *
I’m not unnerved by what he said, but by how easy he made it seem.
I could have left with him— disappeared— a simple thing, really.
Abby N. Lewis (she/her) is the author of the full-length poetry collection Reticent (2016) and the chapbook This Fluid Journey (2018). She has two masters from East Tennessee State University, and she is currently pursuing an MLIS degree. Her creative work has recently appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Across the Margin, Black Moon Magazine, and Red Eft Review. Her book reviews can frequently be found on Chapter 16’s website. She lives in Tennessee, where she wears many hats as a librarian, educator, tutor, and reviewer.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
Child of Light by Jesi Bender (Whisk(e)y Tit, 2025) is a complex and gripping story that explores identity, language, and family dynamics as Ambrétte Memenon journeys through discovering who she is and her supposed role in her family and society. To connect with her family members, Ambrétte learns the language of their interests, including Spiritualism and electricity—two seemingly different ideas that are more similar than she realizes.
Ambrétte tries to answer four questions about Spiritualism throughout the novel:
“What is Man?
What is Soul?
What is Spirit?
& What is Life?” (Bender 18)
As the story takes place mainly in 1896, thirteen-year-old Ambrétte is considered to be a woman. She learns that she needs to act differently and speak only when she is allowed. Her Maman and older brother Modeste Georges, especially, remind her constantly that she has more responsibilities and must act how society wants her to act. Her main goal should be to find a husband. Ambrétte questions this new role and not only what it means to be a woman, but also what it means to leave childhood. She thinks that “maybe childhood was for yourself and maturity was for someone else” because she does not feel like she has a say in anything (Bender 11-12).
However, because Ambrétte is “mature” now, she is excited to have more interactions with her Maman, who thinks Ambrétte is now smart enough to converse with her. Even after years of neglect, Ambrétte is thrilled her mother is acknowledging her because at her core, she just wants to be loved and keep the family together. The only reason Maman is interacting with her is because of Ambrétte’s supposed special gift that links her to spirits. She takes this as an opportunity to learn the language of Spiritualism to please her mother. She wants to master it because “more than anything, Ambrétte [wants] to be able to see these things for her Maman. To be able to give her some peace” (Bender 11). Instead of feeling used, Ambrétte is happy that she feels needed.
Ambrétte also works hard to comprehend the complex idea of electricity to not only understand her absent engineer Papa but also to help mend her parents’ relationship. Ambrétte’s Maman and Papa have an unstable dynamic and do not understand each other at all. Maman is passionate about Spiritualism while Papa is passionate about electricity. It seems like they have absolutely nothing in common with one another. As Ambrétte does her best to grasp both ideas, however, she discovers how Spiritualism and electricity are more similar than they seem. They both involve the persistence of life and energy. She wants to help bridge the gap between her parents by being that link in helping them understand each other.
Language, including French, Spiritualism, and electricity, is a significant theme throughout the novel and Ambrétte strives to understand all of them and their relationship with each other. She must do this because these are the languages of her parents. She thinks:
“When I was young, I never realized that everything has its own language. Music is a language just as French is a language, paintings and movements, a table full of elements—maybe spirituality is the same. Maybe I need to learn how to read your body like its own specific text” (Bender 59).
Ambrétte only knows how to speak English while Papa speaks French. Papa does not make the effort to learn English so she takes on the challenge of learning French instead to dig deeper into understanding the root of her parents’ relationship and to embrace another aspect of her own identity.
Bender demonstrates how Ambrétte also becomes fluent in French through the English translations that Bender adds in the passages. Her parents converse in French and when Ambrétte is translating in her head, she cannot make out some of the words. In the novel, the dialogue is written in French and then below that is as much of an English translation as Ambrétte could comprehend. There are many blanks in between the few words that she does understand. As the story progresses, Ambrétte becomes more fluent in the language and therefore, the English translations become clearer with no blanks. She understands everything and this understanding of French is parallel to how Ambrétte becomes fluent in the languages of her parents as well.
Ambrétte spends her days trying to learn different concepts to better connect with her family, even if it is unreciprocated. She wants to be the bridge connecting humans and spirits like Maman wants, but she also wants to be the bridge to connecting her parents with each other. She wants to save her family. She wants to be loved and feel needed. But as much as Ambrétte is trying to do the saving, who will save her?
Marian Kohng (she/her/hers) is a proud Korean American and an Editorial Intern at Sundress Publications and a Traffic Copy Editor at a local news station in Tucson, AZ. She also has a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and a Master’s in Marketing. She loves to get lost in a good book and will read just about anything, including the back of the shampoo bottle.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Palm Up, Fingers Curled by Abby Lewis (Plan B Press, 2023).
In the Beginning
Talking and driving down Sevierville back roads late at night,
we did not see the wayward limb, heavily adorned with leaves, until it was almost upon us.
You swerved, rescuing us last-minute, and we sat in stunned silence—
’til we looked at each other and laughed.
We were young and fearless; we had more time ahead of us than leaves on that branch— and we were burning stars.
We laughed and laughed and swerved past obstacles—
race horses in the Milky Way, fluid and untraceable.
Abby N. Lewis (she/her) is the author of the full-length poetry collection Reticent (2016) and the chapbook This Fluid Journey (2018). She has two masters from East Tennessee State University, and she is currently pursuing an MLIS degree. Her creative work has recently appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Across the Margin, Black Moon Magazine, and Red Eft Review. Her book reviews can frequently be found on Chapter 16’s website. She lives in Tennessee, where she wears many hats as a librarian, educator, tutor, and reviewer.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
Moon Meridian Novella Award Winner, M.S. Gardner’s Wolf’s Bane (April Gloaming, 2025) toes the line between renowned fable and grotesque reality in a captivating account of one woman’s past, the secrets she holds, and those she uncovers. Gardner spellbinds readers with clever nuances, haunting imagery, and the unspooling of mystery’s threads in an estate in hot, humid Osyka, Mississippi.
Six months before the novella’s start, Gardner’s protagonist, Penny, flees back to Seattle straight after her grandma’s funeral, leaving behind her a trail of guilty excuses; but even she can’t run forever. At the behest of her grandma’s lawyer, Penny reluctantly returns to Osyka to clear out the house. The process is far from seamless, however, and the more of her grandparents’ belongings she sorts through, the harder it is to ignore the memories nipping at her heels.
The wolf still lurks in the shadows after all these years, the echoes of its presence as dogged as itself. Walking through a minefield of a dark past, Penny dodges the triggers as she clears the estate of any trace of its deceased owners, but a sealed letter from her grandma and the irritatingly persistent presence of Duncan, her childhood friend, bring things to a head. The wolf has always stalked her, but for the first time, Penny can no longer dodge it. She must face it, once and for all.
Gardner’s imagery is a masterpiece of shrewd descriptions and unshakeable connotations, immersing the reader in the growing mystery. Phrases such as: “shook her like a dog with a rat in its mouth” (Gardner 11) and “as Death had dragged away his sin-bloated soul” (Gardner 12) set a grisly tone early on.
Most fascinating, however, is Gardner’s use of a mundane piece of furniture, an old recliner, as a focal object which the characters move around both physically and mentally as the plot progresses. The recliner, belonging to Penny’s grandfather, is described as “a hideous mud-brown eyesore” (Gardner 11), and later, “an ugly shit-brown monstrosity, like a huge fat toad from a fairy tale, waiting in the forest to devour little girls who strayed from the path” (20). The descriptions foreshadow a monstrous conclusion through their negative connotations, drenching the reader with unease and the equal morbid desire to read on and find out the truth.
The integration of the recliner is seamless if not a core pillar of the plot. There stands the reader, alongside Grandma Connie at first, then Penny. The reader ignores the recliner when the women do, skirting around it like a large elephant that is at once impossible to ignore yet remains largely unacknowledged until Penny confronts it during her own catharsis.
Gardner carries us to the climax with delicate nuances and a confidence in the reader’s intuition, her writing strengthened by every detail she bestows upon us. With strong allusions to the Little Red Riding Hood fable, Gardner uses parallels of innocence and depravity—Penny’s childhood Red Riding Hood costume, handmade by her grandma, and her grandpa’s copy of the Barely Legal (61) magazine, which has a woman crudely dressed up in a red cape—to nudge the reader towards a horrifying conclusion.
Characterization is another of the book’s striking strengths. Penny, for instance, harbors intriguing dichotomies—a woman who is simultaneously clinical and volatile, a psychiatrist whose implied past childhood sexual abuse still looms over her. Gardner utilizes these inherent contrasts to wind the tension tighter in a raw exploration of trauma and its echoes into adulthood.
The dynamic between Penny and Duncan adds an interesting layer to Penny’s individual characterization. Conflict escalates when Duncan thoughtlessly sits in the recliner. In a frank portrayal of triggers, Penny’s responses grow increasingly frantic as she asks Duncan to get out of the chair, and the reader, who had thus far skirted around the recliner with Penny finally confronts its truth. Duncan embodies both past and present. His embodiment of the past informs Penny’s initial aloofness towards him—likely due to her unwillingness to associate with a traumatic part of her life—while his embodiment of the present inspires his role as a catharsis partner, playing a part in Penny’s healing by absorbing the shockwaves of her grief and righteous rage and later helping her destroy the figuritive wolf.
In a heart-wrenching nod to the inner child within Penny’s psyche, the reader witnesses the softness in her yearning for normalcy and care and feels the relief as acutely as she does when Duncan offers some of it:
“…she had to admit there was something homey, comforting, sitting in the kitchen, watching him cook, being tended to, served—the feeling of being safe and warm, like a child with no knowledge of good and evil” (Gardner 82).
Gardner’s mastery of her characters and subtext particularly shines through Penny’s dynamic with two deceased people: her grandparents. Through particular behaviors towards her grandparents’ separate belongings, the reader forms a vivid image of her relationship with each, one of resentment and hate vs. one of love and care:
“Clothes—pants, shirts, a suit, jackets, underwear, socks—were balled up and shoved into bags, along with shoes and boots, destined to be thrown away.” (41) vs. “Grandma’s room took more time. As Penny removed the clothes from their hangers, she folded each item before placing it in a bag” (42).
Wolf’s Bane dazzles with impeccable tension, witty prose—“dust bunnies as big as rabbits” (Gardner 32)—and side characters who are just as memorable. Readers venture through the dark forest and come out on the other side having killed the wolf with Penny. With a blend of fabulism and dark reality, Gardner wields the reader’s attention with an agility so mesmerizing, the reader is regretful to see the book end!
Tassneem Abdulwahab (she/her) is an aspiring writer and editor with a BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. Trained in oil painting, she recently exhibited and sold two portrait paintings in February 2025. In her free time, you can find her buying more books (no, seriously—she owns three editions of Little Women), snapping pictures of the little details, or sitting at her easel!
Patrick Joseph Caoile spoke with Sundress intern Penny Wei about his latest short story collection Tales from Manila Ave., where they discussed the importance of food, play as a way to navigate migration and displacement, and living on Manila Ave. and places like it.
Penny Wei: What does it mean to belong to a place like Manila Ave, where generational history and familial warmth live alongside eviction and social class divides?
Patrick Joseph Caoile: There’s a line from one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies that Freddy Krueger says, “Every town has an Elm Street!”, which seems to hold true. I even make a reference to this in one of my stories. In the case of Elm Street, the idea that a place is inescapable sounds like a prison. But that’s not all what a sense of place can be. For me, it’s comforting that you can find a Manila Ave. in places like Queens or Jersey City. When I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, there was one there, too. Of course, not every Manila Ave. will have the equivalent of a strong Filipino community. Still, the name implicitly gestures towards the Philippines, and with it so many associations. With its global history as a gateway between the East and the West, the capital city of Manila is an avenue in and of itself. Manila is a metropolis of culture and commerce, but also of extreme class divide between squatters and shopping malls. In cities in the US, gentrification continues to displace those who can no longer afford to live in neighborhoods where their families have flourished for years prior. And yet, people continue to eat, dance, celebrate, mourn, and tell stories. This is how I envision Manila Ave.: a container of all these contradictions—a push and a pull, a home away from home.
PW: In several stories, food serves an important role. How do you see food operating as a bridge between cultures, identities, and memories?
PJC: I find importance not just in food, but in the making of it. When I think of Filipino food, I think of how laborious it is to make. In “Along Came a Stray” the siblings decide to roll lumpia for their Christmas dinner, just as they did when they were younger. They try to hold on to a tradition that they learned from their parents. Lumpia is a very tactile dish, a lot of chopping, mixing, wrapping. And after it’s fried and cooled, you pick one up with your fingers, dip it into some sweet chili sauce, and enjoy it. But it’s worth it. Not just the taste, but the experience. A recipe is a story, right? Beginning, middle, end. So, when I write food into a story, I find it intuitive to bring characters, backstory, and theme together. “Sinigang” definitely synthesizes those goals for me, too.
Even something as simple as coffee speaks to the wider implications of food. Coffee beans need to grow in a specific climate, be cultivated, be farmed, and be harvested. It takes a lot of labor to produce a cup of coffee. There’s also its history as a product of colonization. Alongside its dispersion is a story of displacement. On the other hand, as a beverage of leisure, you’ll find people connecting over coffee—business meetings, dates, catching up with friends, revolutions. Writers, like me, can’t write a single word without it. A lot of stories have been told over coffee. In “Kapé,” I sought to write towards these implications.
Also, I just like to eat and cook. Every writer needs sustenance. I’m a product of a childhood that was shaped by shows on PBS like Yan Can Cook and America’s Test Kitchen and Food Network, where people, food, and stories coexisted. Now, I love The Bear. I wanted to be a chef when I grew up. Maybe I still do.
PW: Catholicism, superstition, and faith run through these stories in different ways. What role does religion play in shaping the Filipino immigrant experience?
PJC: Just as food brings people together, so does religion. It’s all part of custom, like the house blessing in “A State of Grace,” the wedding in “Tong, Tong, Tong,” and the funeral in “A Balikbayan Affair.” These occasions bring together titos, titas, cousins, cousins of cousins, and anyone else who might have entered the celebrants’ lives in some way, big or small. Even the idea of being blessed by an elder, the mano po that is mentioned in “Tales from Manila Ave.,” is tied up in Catholicism. But as much as these customs celebrate grace, there are also aspects of Filipino faith that have a darker edge. Pagpag, for example, is the practice of making a tertiary stop between the site of a funeral and going back home; this way, any lingering or unsettled ghosts won’t follow. I don’t explicitly reference pagpag in “A Balikbayan Affair,” but that’s part of the reason why the family is at a truck stop saloon after the funeral. There are some stories in this collection in which I dip a toe into horror or the Gothic, and I’m definitely going to explore ways to lean into these in the future. In fact, the title Tales from Manila Ave. echoes the title of Nick Joaquin’s Tales of the Tropical Gothic, which is no accident.
PW: Some of your stories sit at the edge of childhood. How do you see childhood as a lens for reckoning with larger forces of war, dictatorship, and displacement?
PJC: I think a lot about a quote from James Baldwin, “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” This has been on my mind for the past few years because of the war and genocide in Palestine, as well as the immigration raids here in the US. Whether it’s a family’s displacement from the land, or their displacement from each other, children are a witness through all of it, and so are we. Baldwin adds, “What we see in the children is what they have seen in us—or, more accurately perhaps, what they see in us.”
When I wrote these stories, I tried to center children as witnesses in some way: as communal narrators memorializing a storyteller, as sisters adjusting to an American suburb, as children trying to prevent their parents’ divorce. But even when stories take a more adult perspective, the children are always in sight, such as the widowed mother looking at her sons in the final scene of “A Balikbayan Affair,” or the first-generation Filipino American protagonists of the last two stories who are now ushering in the next generation. I think it’s important, as a worldview, to consider what it means to be a child living in an empire, where the political is always personal. Of course, Star Wars comes to mind, Avatar: The Last Airbender, too. But Scout Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird was certainly an influence in my writing, specifically as a child witnessing the changes around her, which are simultaneously political and personal.
I immigrated to the US when I was four years old. A lot of the logistics and paperwork happened behind closed doors where my parents carried the weight and anxiety of it all. I know that isn’t the same for every immigrant family. Some children need to translate for their parents, for example. But in these stories, I sought to fill in the gaps of the Filipino American immigrant story. I imagined the space between the world of children and the world of adults full of conflict, tension, and misunderstandings but also of love, hope, and connection. Children often don’t get a say in things. If they did, what would they tell us?
PW: Animals appear throughout the book. What does it mean for the nonhuman to accompany the immigrant story?
PJC: There are definitely a lot of cats in this book, prominently in “The House at the End of Maplewood Drive” and “Along Came a Stray.” In my family, we weren’t allowed to have pets growing up, except for the occasional fish or small turtle in a small tank. We had guinea pigs once, but didn’t bring them along when we moved from California to New Jersey. Only recently, just this past July, did I get my own cat, Clark Kafka “Cafecito” Kent. So, part of working cats into my stories is admittedly wish fulfillment. Usually, in that mythical notion of the American Dream, there’s a dog accompanying the mom, dad, son, and daughter. Dogs are “man’s best friend.” On the other hand, cats get a bad rep, tied up with witches and bad luck superstitions. But cats are so full of personality and also so full of care: the way a mama cat will pick up one kitten after the other to bring them to a safe place, the way she bathes them and gives them attention. The idea of bonded pairs and belonging to a litter—there’s a lot of familial connotations, like the struggle of staying together as a family. We can learn a lot from cats. Just ask T. S. Eliot and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
PW: In “Everything Must Stay” objects refuse to be discarded, even as they choke the living space. How do we measure the value of a life, or the significance/impact of a migration, with the things we keep?
PJC: The store in “Everything Must Stay” is a sari-sari, which means “miscellaneous” or “variety.” I think that meaning captures the immigrant experience in many ways. Immigrants carry a lot of baggage, literal and metaphorical. Sometimes space is limited, so what we choose to take with us must hold some kind of significance in comparison to other things. One example is the Santo Niño statue that Grace and her mother bring to their new apartment in “A State of Grace.” A toothbrush or laundry detergent—those simpler things can easily be found in a sari-sari store. At the same time, things can take on a new or second life. In the tradition of sending a balikbayan box to family in the Philippines, secondhand clothes or shelf-stable foods like canned Vienna sausages or chocolates become totems of our connection back to the motherland, back to the people we still hold dear despite the geographical distance. Objects are gifts, objects are resources. In “Everything Must Stay,” the sari-sari not only holds snacks and beauty products, but also holds the Filipino community together, and ultimately keeps the family at its center together.
PW: Childhood games—rice kites, Halloween nights, street songs—recur throughout the collection. What does it mean to return to play as a way of surviving displacement? How does childhood in general serve as a lens for exploring war?
PJC: I remember when I was just entering the first grade, when my family had just moved to New Jersey, I made friends with classmates by coming up with some really weird lore about our school. We gathered around someone’s desk, claiming that we had each seen a weird, glowing green light outside the school at night. As if we all went out of our homes, one by one, when everyone was asleep. We confirmed each other’s accounts, even drawing out a map of the school and labeling the tree where the green light was spotted. We probably could’ve passed a lie detector test; we were so convinced of ourselves. But of course, none of it was real (or was it?). I don’t know if anyone else from that class remembers, but that memory has stuck with me. As the new kid in the class, I felt welcomed by my classmates.
Play is unifying in that way—play as creative instead of competitive. Like I mentioned before, seeing the world through the eyes of children is ingrained in my approach to storytelling. Writing is play. We pretend as our characters and imagine what their lives must be like, and our task is to convince everyone else that they are true. The power of storytelling is that it centers on people, not statistics. It cuts through paperwork, bureaucracy, technicalities—that stuff of the adult world. Some might consider that escapism. At least for me, writing embraces the truth of our world. Or like how Kuya Jem does in “Tales from Manila Ave.,” it bends the truth towards magic.
PW: Several of the stories highlight women as laborers—nannies, nurses, domestic workers. Can you speak to the tension between Filipino women sustaining homes across two countries while rarely being recognized in either?
PJC: The Philippines has matriarchal roots. Despite the patriarchal structures introduced by colonization and imperialism, those roots still bloom. For example, there have been two women who’ve held office as president of the Philippines. Even through Catholicism, women seem to be the center of local religious life, leading community prayers and the rosary. They are also great storytellers in their own right; tsismis is indeed a craft. In this way, I think Filipino women might be most attuned to what it means to be Filipino. To sustain that across two countries is no easy task. It takes a lot of labor, in more ways than one. Many become Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in the healthcare and hospitality industries, and others as domestic workers. Many are teachers, too, like my own mother, who is a special education teacher. In all these fields and professions, there’s a necessary and intuitive sense of care. Mia Alvar captures a lot of these sentiments in her stories from In the Country, and I am so very grateful for her kind words of support for my book. Like in her stories, I similarly sought to capture the tension between Filipino women’s professional and personal lives.
PW: How does Tales from Manila Ave. as a whole explore survival across borders and generations?
PJC: I don’t think I ever considered the theme of survival in my book. But surely it’s there. I recently came across the story “Target Island” by Mariah Rigg, and in an interview with The Common, she considers how “the short story is just like a really long obituary.” When talking about Rigg’s story with my fiction students, which is about a man’s long and harrowing life intertwined with the island of Kahoʻolawe, we noted how obituaries usually end with a list of living family members, the “survived by.” In some ways, I think it’s helpful to think of short stories as obituaries.
The dedication of Tales from Manila Ave. certainly presents this book as one: to my family and relatives “in this world and the next.” In 2023 I had lost my paternal grandmother, and in the following year, 2024, I lost my maternal grandmother. We grew up mostly away from them, but whenever my siblings and I visited them in the Philippines, they were always so happy and proud of us. The last time we had seen them in person was in 2019. Their passing was a bit of a realization that my connection to the motherland was fading. Grief is always built into the immigrant story in that way. The characters in my stories get to that realization, too. I can list all the ways my characters mourn and grieve, but I would practically be listing every one of them in my stories. They grieve their parents, spouses, and siblings. They grieve a life of what-could-have-been if they had never left the Philippines at all. They are the “survived by” who have to figure out how to live with what’s left of their loved ones: customs, traditions, faith, memories, secrets, recipes, and ultimately themselves.
Patrick Joseph Caoile was born in the Philippines and grew up in northern New Jersey. His work is featured in storySouth, Porter House Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, the anthology Growing Up Filipino 3, and elsewhere. He has received support from Roots.Wounds.Words and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He holds a BA in English from Saint Peter’s University, MA in English from Seton Hall University, and PhD in English with a creative writing concentration from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is a visiting assistant professor of literature and creative writing at Hamilton College.
Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Longfellow House, Cafe Muse, and Just Poetry, amongst others. Her works are up or forthcoming on Eunoia Review, Inflectionist Review, Dialogist, Aloka, and elsewhere.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Alexa White. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, January 25th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Alexa White is a mixed-race, neurodivergent writer and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she earned her BA in creative writing and studio art. Alexa lives in Knoxville, her semi-hometown, and is the Creative Director and Assistant Editor at Sundress. She takes delight in backroads, quarries, and the last few seconds of sunset and redefines her bedtime nightly.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “REVOLT!: Past as Prologue,” a workshop led by Henry Hicks IV on Wednesday, January 14th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: SAFTA).
“REVOLT!: Past as Prologue” will be a generative workshop for writers of all levels working in prose. We will engage with texts such as Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, and “Venus In Two Acts” by Saidiya Hartman to examine the role of history and historical memory in bolstering our art as writers and our actions as changemakers.
In REVOLT!, participants will be asked to bring in an example of a historic moment of uprising. Together, we will examine and analyze these histories while being prompted to generate our own pieces of literary, narrative, or speculative prose that engages, builds upon, or inherits this history of rebellion. REVOLT! will urge participants to envision themselves as agents of change locally, nationally, and globally—and to support them in using their writing as a tool for envisioning and enacting resistance work today.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Henry Hicks Venmo: @heser1 or CashApp: $heser1
Henry Hicks IV (he/him) is an American writer and organizer. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, Mother Jones, Teen Vogue, In These Times, The Drift, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He is a current graduate student at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College in creative writing and comparative American studies. His writing has been supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Oxford Writers’ House, and The Porch. He can be found online at henryhicksiv.com.
This event is brought to you by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 8 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed in 2025.
Merrick’s final selection for the best of 2025 is from Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Northwestern University Press, 2025).
Content Warning: suicide
Stay
Wanting to die isn’t the same as no longer wanting to live— stepping, for a moment, into the street. Yes, this isn’t even
your worst year, but you’re of an age—horror weighing pockets like stones. If you walk down to the river now,
it won’t be as before—tears gumming eyes—but calm as thumbing a final page and sliding the book back
onto a shelf. It would mean you’d seen enough people who, rather than treat their pit bull’s infection, remove
her eyes; manatees carved with the president’s name; cities barbed to prevent rest. Being alive is not the same
as wanting to live, though drought-stunted magnolias blush green this morning. Once, when you were very
young, you camped under one in a friend’s yard, woke in moonlight and unzipped the tent to spring’s white
offerings. So in your right pocket, stones; left, flowers. Sink fists in them both. Stay.
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue,Poetry Northwest,Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality,BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
