Finding Home: Immigration and Displacement, May ’25 Editor: Vallie Lynn Watson Guest Editor: Leah Joseph Managing Editor: Karris Rae Associate Editor: Taryn White Assistant Editors: Robbie Hess, Jade Turner, Meilyn Woods Interns: Ta’Mya Davis, Elaine Schroeder Donna Turan, “Liberty’s Lament,” Acrylic, marker, and pen on canvas Letter from the Editor…
Read MoreLetter from the Editor Vallie Lynn Watson __________ Summer is meant to be a time of rest, but our McNeese MFA students aren’t slowing down! Thanks to Leah Joseph, Boudin‘s got another wowza of an issue. Our Immigration and Displacement CFS brought in an unprecedented amount of submissions and Leah has selected…
Read MoreLetter from the Guest Editor Leah Jiazi Joseph __________ What is home and how do we find it? How do we make sense of it? It is difficult to unwrap the layers of the definition, as they range from the physical dwelling where your belongings are, the area you’re from,…
Read MoreGinsberg’s Transient Domicile Jay Daugherty __________ __________ Jay Daughery‘s oil painting “Ginsberg’s Transient Domicile” was created by combining frottage and automatism. The title is a play on the 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle and Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem “Howl”. He first encountered Buddhism as a homeless teenager traveling across America—an experience that…
Read MoreLike Bursting Jellyfish Across the Neon Sea Alexandra McAnarney __________ When the first bomb goes off it’s far enough away from home that it’s easy to confuse for a stray thunder burst. The girl, who lies awake as she does most nights since she arrived back in the capital city…
Read MoreA Big Red Island Christine H. Chen __________ Behind the carved mahogany table Tang tai-tai the matchmaker scanned the girl up and down before telling her to sit with a tone that cut short any form of protest. Tang tai-tai squinted behind her thick tortoise shell glasses as if to…
Read MoreKilling the Ingénu Valerie Tirado __________ To escape our blood-soaked land,we rather flock on frays of papier-mâché rafts swallowed whole by tumultuous waves than live where the ironclad hungerfor the metallic taste of censorship. How to distill home from homeland when—as a boy—I was stripped of my mother,handed a rifle & taught to kill…
Read MoreEven the Rocks Turn Away When We Look at Them R Rice __________ She wakes to find herself far from home, from family, the tent sweltering under glass-hard sky. Those stirring around her, all of them, on their way, they hope, somewhere else. For a moment she’s still, lost in the moving of her body’s own…
Read MoreIn the Strawberry Mountains Sam Olson __________ Grandmother, I know you don’t read the newsany longer, but in case you heard, it’s true–they want to send 30,000 peopleto a camp called Gitmo. Campingis what we did come June. I was a camper,once, then a counselor. Find a holeon a creek?…
Read MoreRoad Song Jed Myers __________ I’ve ground my teeth to an aching, jawsore from a long clench while I searchedfor a road out of a war, no knowing which side I was on. And I dreamed a crossing—safe passage, no gate, no screamed inquisitions at gunpoint between wired-off halves of land— not…
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