To celebrate Asian/Pacific Heritage Month, we’ve curated this selection of poems that give voice to Asian American experiences centered around inheritance, history, memory, and belonging.
This roundup features poems and audio recordings by Ally Ang, Monica Kim, Arah Ko, Vannida S. Kol, Sati Mookherjee, Jessica Nirvana Ram, Eylie Sasajima, Jeddie Sophronius, Sophia Terazawa, Elise Thi Tran, Bunkong Tuon, and MT Vallarta. These poems first appeared in Shō No. 3, Shō No. 4, Shō No. 5, and Shō No. 6.
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- “Row Ends” by Sati Mookherjee
- “Salt” by Elise Thi Tran
- “Departure from Mondulkiri” by Vannida S. Kol
- “My Ancestors Didn’t Scream” by Bunkong Tuon
- “Neighborhood Tour” by MT Vallarta
- “Listening to Ezio Bosso on Flight EY 474 to Jakarta” by Jeddie Sophronius
- “Carving Rivers” by Jessica Nirvana Ram
- “Magpie 까치” by Arah Ko
- “praise & sorrow ekphrastic” by Monica Kim
- “H Mart” by Eylie Sasajima
- “After ‘Prolonged Grief Disorder’ Was Added to the DSM-5” by Ally Ang
- “[“Xa Xa Xa Lắm”]” by Sophia Terazawa
“Row Ends” by Sati Mookherjee
Row Ends
We stand in a field with everyone we love,
scarves pulled into standards by the wind.
The great house with its turrets and fountain
and three car garage is behind us.
We built it. Inside the grandmother
is listening to paath. Our bodies will slot
into the glass-tiled shower stalls,
and cool beds. We built the house stalk by stalk
and cane by cane. It holds everyone we love,
along with jars and tins of powder and paste
and pickle on long granite-topped islands,
holds the surety of how we plant and how we pick
how our machines round the row ends
telling devotion in lines of equal length.
About this poem: “Row Ends” is from Deś, a manuscript based on interviews I conducted with Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani immigrant family and friends in the corner of the Pacific Northwest where I grew up and live today. Deś means “land,” “country” or “homeland” in multiple South Asian languages.
“Row Ends” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Sati Mookherjee is the author of Eye (Ravenna Press, 2022) and Ways of Being (Albiso Award, MoonPath Press, 2023). Recent work appears/is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, Poetry Northwest, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her collaborations with contemporary classical composers have been performed or recorded by ensemble and solo musicians. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust / Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship and serves on the Board of Directors of CASCADIA International Women’s Film Festival. Please visit at satimookherjee.com.
“Salt” by Elise Thi Tran
“Salt” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Elise Thi Tran is a writer and poet. Her work appears or is forthcoming in APARTMENT, Blackbird, Diode, Copper Nickel, The Kenyon Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. Find Elise on Instagram @elise.tran and selections of her work at linktr.ee/elisethi.
“Departure from Mondulkiri” by Vannida S. Kol
Departure from Mondulkiri
Mother, resting on red earth,
unburied, unmourned.
A river of fragrant clouds
floats between mountains,
summoning
the dead.
She rises. It is time to
abandon the war, the body,
the war inside the body.
It is time to return to
nothingness.
The children wait.
Mother, daughter, son—
They gather lotus petals
& ride the boat
to the next realm of being.
Forgotten child,
survivor, alone
in suffering,
watches them go.
About this poem: “Departure from Mondulkiri” Context: My father was born in 1973, two years before the Cambodian genocide began; he does not remember the faces of his mother and siblings. From their lineage, we are descendants of the Bunong tribe, mountain people of red earth.
“Departure from Mondulkiri” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Vannida S. Kol is a Khmer-American poet and the eldest daughter of refugees, reimagining culture, religion, and family history in her writing. She is an MFA candidate at Randolph College. Her work has appeared in The Margins, The Rising Phoenix Review, QUIET!, and elsewhere. She divides her time between Texas and Cambodia, her two motherlands.
“My Ancestors Didn’t Scream” by Bunkong Tuon
My Ancestors Didn’t Scream
though I wish they had when their
blood soaked Kampuchea’s soil.
I wish they raised their fists, banded
together to resist the sickles and
black hearts of the Khmer Rouge.
But this desire, and I know this,
comes from someone who wasn’t
there as an adult, someone who wishes
it hadn’t happened, someone who
couldn’t say it when his daughter
asked what had happened to him
as a child to make him rage like this
when he saw a few strands of
noodles left in her mermaid bowl.
“My Ancestors Didn’t Scream” appeared in Shō No. 6.
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor who teaches at Union College in Schenectady, in NY. In 2024, he published What Is Left, a Greatest Hits chapbook from Jacar Press, and Koan Khmer, his debut novel from Northwestern UP/Curbstone Books. He lives with his wife and children in Upstate New York. Visit his website at bunkongtuon.com.
“Neighborhood Tour” by MT Vallarta
Neighborhood Tour
My mother points out all the beautiful things:
a butterfly and its pearled wings,
a green hummingbird poking its snout into a silky
violet, a chubby Filipina baby whose laughter
echoes like the peal of Christmas bells.
As she smiles through my tears,
my last sob plummeting into my stomach’s
well, I cannot tell her that the butterfly has been
hung and nailed to a wall. The hummingbird is a
ghost, the violets bulldozed for highrises.
The baby grows up to be a girl and the girl lies
alone on Christmas Eve with a 104 degree fever
while her mother refuses to hear her.
I am sorry I cannot see the beautiful things.
I swallow the pearls, disappear with the
hummingbird, and let the girl be swaddled
by the well.
“Neighborhood Tour” appeared in Shō No. 4.
MT Vallarta (they/them) is a poet and Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. They are the author of the poetry collection, What You Refuse to Remember, winner of the 2022 Small Harbor Publishing Laureate Prize. A Kundíman fellow, Roots. Wounds. Words. fellow, and Pushcart Prize nominee, their poetry and creative nonfiction can be found in The Selkie, Shō Poetry Journal, Madwomen in the Attic, Nat. Brut, Apogee, and others. They live on Northern Chumash lands, in Grover Beach, CA.
“Listening to Ezio Bosso on Flight EY 474 to Jakarta” by Jeddie Sophronius
Listening to Ezio Bosso on Flight EY 474 to Jakarta
I’m more broken than I’ve ever been.
This shell of a body, emptied
and longing. My plastic cup too, emptied.
I’m asking for water, please just a splash
to quench this dryness. Which is more precious,
a memory or a reminder? I’m
both the son who lived and the reminder
of the daughter who didn’t. My life began
with the dead, with dying. What now, I asked
before I learned to speak, before I
saw your eyes, all those years ago. Mother,
is my face too great of a reminder?
Yes, I carry the same disease as your
daughter. Your father, mother, brother—
so many burials, bodies covered
in earth. What then? What comes after?
I exhume our graves over and over
again, with each line, with each stanza, with
each poem. All for you, mother. You told
me to remember our dead. So I did.
About this poem: The poem “Listening to Ezio Bosso on Flight EY 474 to Jakarta” comes from my manuscript-in-progress, Green Card. The collection, mostly written on planes, meditates on the perpetual state of in-betweenness and the difficulty of citizenship that migrants face.
“Listening to Ezio Bosso on Flight EY 474 to Jakarta” appeared in Shō No. 5.
Jeddie Sophronius is the author of the poetry collections Happy Poems & Other Lies (Codhill Press, 2024), Interrogation Records (Gaudy Boy, 2024), Love & Sambal (The Word Works, 2024), and the chapbook Blood·Letting (Quarterly West, 2023). A Chinese-Indonesian writer from Jakarta, they received their MFA from the University of Virginia, where they currently serve as a lecturer in English. The recipient of the 2023 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, their poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Read more of their work at nakedcentaur.com
“Carving Rivers” by Jessica Nirvana Ram
Carving Rivers
The days have been heavy lately,
an albatross on each shoulder,
gravity tightens its grip on me,
more pulled toward center earth,
molten core. If I stepped foot on
my lawn there’d be imprint, footsteps
in dirt from the sheer weight. I dream
of wings. Fashioning feathers out of
dirty forks, unwashed silverware
turned aeronautical feat, a sight
of silver specking the skies. But I am
not good with my hands, these palms
slick with blood, callouses, I build
rickety structures, perilous relationships.
I think of Parvati sculpting Ganesh out
of turmeric paste, am I not too, motherly,
able to birth things worthwhile for this
realm? Everything falls apart at my feet,
scattered remains. I am all rage and nowhere
to go, no Kali emerging from my forehead,
I am clenched fists and tear filled eyes.
I’ve always hated that about myself,
that I cry when I’m angry. What wrath
do I exude when my body turns river,
all I do is flood, overwhelm. I am too much
water, not enough earth, nothing grounding.
My father asks me every week about my
plants and I tell him they’re alive, if barely.
I imagine the person I could be if I was a
place of bloom, if I’d be the same, if my
father would worry as much as he does.
I don’t tell him about the heavy days, but
I think he knows. The valley knows too well
the river that cuts through it.
About this poem: I wrote “Carving Rivers” on a flight to Kansas City after reading Sarah Ghazal Ali’s Theophanies, which I highly recommend. My writing process is very informed by my reading, sometimes I’ll have to put a book down to write a poem. Other times I’ll finish a book and carry that energy into a poem that feels aligned in some way. This poem came out fully formed, I wrote it by hand, and made no changes to it before publication. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it feels like access to a certain type of magic.
“Carving Rivers” appeared in Shō No. 5. We nominated this poem for a Pushcart Prize.
Jessica Nirvana Ram is an Indo-Guyanese poet. She is the author of the poetry collection Earthly Gods (Game Over Books, 2024). Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Honey Literary, and elsewhere. Jessica was a 2022-23 Stadler Fellow, she currently works as the Publicity and Outreach Manager for the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts. She lives and writes in Lewisburg, PA.
“Magpie 까치” by Arah Ko
About this poem: About two years ago, when I was visiting halmeoni (할머니) in Korea, she said there was a magpie every time we were walking around outside. “There’s a bird there.” Oriental magpies are a lot like a crow or raven in the US—the large kind of sleek black bird. I was so intrigued, because every time she saw one she was like, that one is lucky. I kept feeling haunted by that, because she’s had such a challenging life. She was born under Japanese annexation; she almost starved to death multiple times; she’s one of eight siblings from two mothers; she was a refugee at eight years old. She walked the length of Korea on foot multiple times during the Korean War. She grew up largely in a refugee camp in Busan. But she considers herself very lucky—to be haunted by these lucky images such as the magpie. I thought that was both so beautiful and so hauntingly tragic, and that ends up culminating in the end of this poem. [Read more in this interview with Claire Zhou].
“Magpie 까치” appeared in Shō No. 4. We nominated this poem for a Pushcart Prize.
Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai’i, the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025), and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2026). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Anthology, Best of Net, and Best New Poets and is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest,and elsewhere. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the Ohio State University and is a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.
“praise & sorrow ekphrastic” by Monica Kim
About this poem: “praise & sorrow ekphrastic” is part of a larger poetry project about haenyeo – the Korean women from Jeju Island who deep dive for seafood for a living. It is an ekphrastic of the documentary Three Moons of Biyangdo which follows three haenyeo sisters who live on Biyangdo (a smaller island off of Jeju Island).
“praise & sorrow ekphrastic” appeared in Shō No. 5. We nominated this poem for Best Spiritual Literature.
Monica Kim (she/her) is a queer Korean diasporic writer living on Canarsie & Munsee Lenape land (Brooklyn, New York). She is a first reader at Augur Magazine and has been a part of Tin House Summer Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Periplus Collective, and The Watering Hole. Her writing has appeared in Shō Poetry Journal, Gulf Coast Journal, SUSPECT, and other publications.
“H Mart” by Eylie Sasajima
H Mart
Seattle, 2023
i am here with you by the premade sushi.
by the out-of-season strawberries.
by the tofu. this is me telling you
that i am sorry. i am judging ramen labels
by the colors. i am hungry like only
a true american could be. i am starving
for something i can’t be fed.
i will look into the ocean.
i will eat stale rice and think of you
sweating with promise under the pacific sun
and i will wonder if you knew then
how america was only waiting
to sink its teeth into you. this is me
saying that the bite scars are hereditary.
i am hiding them under a tongue
that still butchers our name.
i am asking you to forgive me.
i am a new person
learning an old language. i will need time
to get it right. this is me understanding.
this is me saying thank you. i am crying
in the wine aisle. i am standing in our country.
i am trying to be full.
About this poem: Even though I’ve always felt very proud to come from a Japanese American family, I grew up feeling like my heritage was something rooted in the past, not the present. When I went to Seattle in 2023 for the AWP conference, I found myself in an H Mart, surrounded by the Asian American culture I always felt like I was missing. I wrote “H Mart” to try to speak into the past—to my great-grandparents who came from Japan to America—and express the pride I felt by being so connected to my roots in the present. It’s still the poem I’m proudest of having written.
“H Mart” appeared in Shō No. 4. We nominated this poem for Best New Poets 2024.
Eylie Sasajima is a poet who calls the Chesapeake Watershed home. Her work appears in Shō Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Mississippi.
“After ‘Prolonged Grief Disorder’ Was Added to the DSM-5” by Ally Ang
After “Prolonged Grief Disorder” Was Added to the DSM-5
Grief in these circumstances is normal,
but not at certain levels and not most
of the day, nearly every day, for months.
- Vivian B. Pender, American Psychiatric
Association President
Today, my heart is working
remotely. I watch it thump
and thrum reliably behind
the blur of a computer screen.
A man with a gun opens fire
in a subway car. I refresh
my emails and reheat the stale
remnants of my morning
coffee. A dull twinge of dread
crystallizes in my throat. When
I type Asian woman into google,
the algorithm helpfully suggests:
killed / attacked / stabbed /
shoved onto the train tracks /
hit by a baseball bat. I hit
refresh again. A war breaks
out far enough away to be
a safe abstraction. Thank god
we can finally get back to
normal, an acquaintance sighs,
as though the millions dead
can be swatted out of sight
like a mosquito on a humid
summer night, smushed against
a paper towel, one stubborn
limb still twitching until
it stops. The employee
handbook reads, don’t forget
to clock out before you let
the fragile ceiling of your grief
shatter around you! Don’t
forget to sweep up the shards
on your way out! I’ve written this
before—this poem, this elegy—
and I will keep writing it until
I find some assemblage of words,
some spell to make sense of this:
the cruel machinery of capital
grinding relentlessly toward
a singular, griefless end.
“After “Prolonged Grief Disorder” Was Added to the DSM-5” appeared in Shō No. 3. We nominated this poem for Best New Poets 2023.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet and editor based in Seattle. They are the author of Let the Moon Wobble, forthcoming from Alice James Books in November 2025. Ally has received fellowships and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and Artist Trust. Ally’s writing has been published in Poets.org, The Rumpus, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. With Cody Stetzel, Ally co-hosts Other People’s Poems, a poetry open mic and reading series at Open Books: A Poem Emporium.
“[“Xa Xa Xa Lắm”]” by Sophia Terazawa
[“Xa Xa Xa Lắm”]
live performance after a song of the same title
At Chị Ba’s. Waco, Texas. On VHS
our hosts arrange pyramids of apricots. Cut to
someone across the street glancing through
a tinted fossil shop window. Who wears
a child’s Santa hat, taffy pink gloves
pulled past the elbows? Who distills that
motion, if observed long enough, an allegory?
Divas lip-sync onstage. Was in lieu of
leaving their fault, a refugee, or both? One
becomes my aunt. Enter AUNT in wide
angle shots. Flickers form infinite
possibilities cast on that screen. AUNT
enters a room. She sits awake all night.
If you enter, she says. I’ll shoot. UNCLE,
played by her first boyfriend in America,
fades in. He stands outside like a comma
at the door, looking in, squaring the audience.
About this poem: “[“Xa Xa Xa Lắm”]” was written after a live recording of “Đợi Chờ” sung by Thanh Lam. I have sweet childhood memories of an aunt’s place, where relatives often packed around the television with piles of egg rolls to watch long episodes of musical variety shows like Paris By Night. The person wearing a child’s Santa hat recently appeared in a dream. Everything else in the poem is true and from long ago.
“[“Xa Xa Xa Lắm”]” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Sophia Terazawa is the author of two poetry collections with Deep Vellum, Winter Phoenix and Anon. A third book of poems, Oracular Maladies, is forthcoming with Noemi Press in 2026. Tetra Nova, a debut novel, was published in February 2025 by Deep Vellum.