Ai Li: Monique, your poem opens with hunger that has no direction, and in each line it's as though the speaker is searching for something: their brother, strawberries and warm rice, a "bright exit home." Additionally, it invokes desire stagnating through the image of the "egg [that] grew slow in my palm like a stain." How does a poem become a place for these dormant wants, and how does it home the complexities of these emotions without demanding clarity?

Monique: Thank you for these questions and for publishing my work. When I was a kid, I went through a phase where I sewed my dresses, and that was when I became interested in small spaces and what you could do with them. Sewing, fashion, and writing are symbiotically linked in my experience and help me access my sadness and desires. I enjoy the tactile sense and immediacy of short forms, and my output is often irrational because my memories are irrational and usually challenging to reckon with, but it feels good to do so. I'm turned on by media that some might find garish, like TV melodramas and crafting. There was a strong craft movement in Fresno, California in the late 80 and brown women and children were archiving the domestic. Seeing that meant a lot to me, and it is unshakable from how I value memory and deciding where to place it in writing.

Ai Li: The poem also has a sense of wandering to it as the speaker exists in transit, from cowboy roads, to stucco tourist traps, to the mother's Oldsmobile, the new apartment with the brother, the blue lawn. What does home mean in the context of this poem? How does language become a site of return?

Monique: Three of my grandparents were from Texas, and there was a lot of nostalgia for it in my family homes, but the more I grew up, the more I felt myself to be as California as it gets. Not to negate my elders and their origins, but I will always be homesick for California in my imagination. When I cook, I can never duplicate the taste the way my mother could with her mother's recipes. I feel set apart in a real way and I used to be ashamed of that, but now I honor that part of my existence. The shifting across California feels very much mine and a big part of my feminism. Ever since girlhood I have fantasized about other places, but the valley always comes through. My fantasies and language are porous, and that's what home will always mean to me. When the surreal seeps into the domestic and vice versa.

Ai Li: Could you tell me about one piece of art—this could be anything from other poems to TV show scripts—that has been deeply formative in creating the spaces your work exists in? In what ways does it continue to compel you towards new understandings?

Monique: Miguel Cabrera's posthumous portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It moves me immensely because I often think of her and her multiplicity. As a teacher and government worker, I relate to her existence inside an institution and her desire to create not just one way but many different ways despite its burdens and rules. She inspires me to constantly redefine godliness on my own terms and how we must look to matriarchy even while we live in patriarchal systems, just like she's a woman inside a man's painting.

Ai Li: No matter how seemingly common or unusual, what is your favorite part about your own writing process? Even if this varies from one piece to the next, what continues to surprise or delight you? What about writing, or delving into that headspace, allows you to appreciate it?

Monique: My favorite part of my writing process is that I can begin writing anywhere in many physical and tactile spaces. Much of that comes from growing up in the 90s when we wrote everything down because we didn't have the tech. We wrote on napkins, on our hands, and on bathroom walls. That's how we hooked up with people we liked or broke promises to reconnect later on down the line. My mom used to get angry and leave notes for the family around the house. I still like to write in this way because it feels fevered, impulsive, and discerning at the same time. Writing reminds me that my headspace can be entirely my own, but it takes a lot of work to be mine. Thinking about other people, the space they occupy, and the words I build around them is exhausting and a lot to carry. And so I need to recognize when I need to not write and look around and sleep and live.