by Angelica Urquizo
Wakemare: text message from my father (found poem)
So last night I noticed
odd soft spots in the wall
running the staircase up to the theater.
I assumed water had seeped in—spring showers.
Planned to inspect more closely in
morning’s clarity.
Yet awoke to a morning muddy
with dozens of wasps
IN the house.
They had stinger-drilled a hole in
from the wetlands outside and
nested inside our wall.
Spent much of the day making repairs
and killing wasps.
Not optimal.
L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University, Taiwan Literature Base 2024–2025 Writer-in-Residence, and Pushcart-nominated member of the Taipei Poetry Collective with poetry in JMWW, New Orleans Review, Strange Horizons, trampset, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife and hound in the ‘literature mountain’ district of Taipei. Connect on Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky: @acadialogue.
Angelica Urquizo is a poet seeking magic in the mundane, finding a great deal of inspiration from the natural world, mythology, shadow work and the human experience. She explores her expression mainly through poetry but also through collage, photography, and whichever craft project she’s drawn to at a given time. She is earning her MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at University of Washington Bothell and has poetry in Moss Puppy Magazine, Stripes Literary Magazine and Spark to Flame. You can find her on instagram: @acraftyname.