Mother’s Day. Florists sleep in. An unofficial holiday. I indulge. Noon light shadow play. Collaboration with a fruit bowl. My rotund silhouette. With child in shadow.

How shadows disappoint.
Failure of mirror logic.

Pregnancy as planting. A meantime of gardening. The marigolds I raised. Ivy trail of progress & yet the audits of my body: What else have you grown? Groves of solace and moss. What’s meant to be, wills itself. Take lineage for example, the mother who birthed me, her mother who bore her, that mother and mothers of mothers before her.

It should follow that I follow my mirrors.
Failure of mirror logic.

I do not follow save for the premise that mirrors are reality in reverse. In the shadow I am pregnant. In the light I am expectant. I mean to grow in other directions. I mean to pursue the greater question. What comes before continuity? Assumption. What’s meant to be wills itself. The glow or the seasons. Hair to my breasts now. I grew a heart back from fasting. Seeds in my stomach - Spit it out, spit it out now - what else can you grow? These poems. My gall. The himalayas. Orange days. Six more limbs. Their longing. More ovaries. New postures. Gaja gamini. I can grow.
Come here. Feel how warm this is now.

Kiran Bath is a writer based in New York. She has received fellowships and support from Poets House, the Vermont Studio Center and Brooklyn Poets. Kiran is a Kundiman fellow and a Tin House alumni. Her writing appears in wildness, The Adroit Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and other journals. Her debut collection of poems, INSTRUCTIONS FOR BANNO, is forthcoming with Kelsey Street Press this summer.

Tuan Vu was born in Saigon, Vietnam. As far back as he can remember, he never stopped creating. His favorite mediums are drawing, painting, and photography, which did not prevent him from touching also on design and architecture. Although he has attended several drawing, painting, and photography workshops at the University of Montreal over the years, he remains essentially a self-taught artist. His natural talent is profusely expressed through his work. His work was first seen at an auction he organized in 2010 to help people in Haiti hit by a devastating earthquake. Subsequently, he participated in four group exhibitions: Pluriel au singulier at the Galerie GOT (2016), Beach Life at the Galerie Luz (2019), Montréal en Arts (2021), and at the Institut National Art Contemporain gallery (2022) which his works represented by the gallery. He has also had three solo exhibitions: the photography exhibition Brume at Galerie LUZ (2018). In 2021, the exhibition of paintings, drawings, and photographs Eternal Summer/Endless Summer at the LE LivART Art Center. In 2022, an individual exhibition of paintings: Songes Hédonistes at the Institut National Art Contemporain gallery. He participated in an art fair FOCUS ART FAIR (BOOM) at the Carrousel du Louvre, in Paris (2022).