Mandy Moe Pwint Tu
Poetry
Mandy Moe Pwint Tu is a pile of ginkgo leaves in a trench coat from Yangon, Myanmar, and the author of two poetry chapbooks, Monsoon Daughter (Thirty West Publishing House, 2022) and Unsprung (Newfound, 2023). Her work has appeared in POETRY, Beloit Poetry Journal, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.
Fable for a Father
One day I grew scales. My father grew feathers.
In our living room, we became what the other
hated. He said, You’re my daughter so I can eat you.
I said, I will dive so deep into the ocean you will never
find me. Impasse, but not really. He bared his wings.
I ran to the water. He was hungry. I was sorry.
When he died, I found a feather tucked under
my scales. I named it grief. I wrote with it.