Excerpt

There are no Filipinos in Mississippi

The Growler

but the new bartender has suspicions

about me. He considers:

maybe it’s the new moon

nostrils, the rounded shape

of my face, or the way I look

at him, wondering, too. Certain

sweetness trickles down my glass

as he pulls away from the tap,

his hands steady like brown boys

on skateboards, like my brother

when he has something to say.

I hold out my credit card,

a late invitation. Ocampo,

he reads, as if it’s the easiest thing

he’s said all day. Then we’re laughing

at each other—it’s Thursday,

and the night is still ours

to kick through. We aren’t worried

about our elbows, knees, or parents

stalking the cul-de-sac, shouting

for us to come home.

About the Poet

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her first chapbook Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also be found in Frontier Poetry, The Margins, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among other publications. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and earned her MFA from the University of Mississippi in 2025. She currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi and aims to document and elevate stories of Filipinos in the Deep South. Her family comes from Pangasinan, Philippines.

Notes

Poems in this chapbook first appeared in the following publications: Denver Quarterly, The Margins – Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, TLDTD, and Palette Poetry.