Hikari Leilani Miya

Hikari Leilani Miya (she/they) is an LGBTQ disabled Japanese Filipina American who graduated from Cornell University in 2019 with a BA in English, and from University of San Francisco with an MFA in Poetry. She is a scholarship-awarded doctoral candidate in Florida State University's PhD program studying and teaching animals, the nonhuman, and ecology across different genres. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her poems have been published or forthcoming in dozens of literary journals, including Sonora Review, Wildscape Lit, Chestnut Review, Broadkill Review, and Cobra Milk. She was the 2021 semi-finalist for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize and author of Do Not Feed the Animal (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She is the current “Animals” section editor for Honey Literary Magazine. She is a herpetologist with a special interest in disabled animals; she recently worked as an Animal Care Specialist at North Florida Wildlife Center with endangered species from all over the globe but currently volunteers at the Tallahassee Museum specializing in reptile care and handling, as well as care for Florida native species.

Easy read of the poem in the image above:

summer body

get your body ready for the summer
with this all-natural, plant-based—

hold the hell up. hold the sun. hold my belly.

why does anyone need a specific body for summer?
what is wrong with the nice brown squishy body
i have now? or anyone’s body. bodies are privileges.

isn’t every body that experiences summer
a summer body. beaver enters summer
with a splash into his pool. i too, can enter

summer with a splash into a pool. we both
have brown bodies and go on missions
to find fun sticks, ones that say, thank you

brown body for choosing me this summer.
brown pelicans with one eye and half a wing
and white pelicans with half a wing waddle

into summer the same way they waddle into
spring: eagerly, towards the shine of frozen
thawed fish in a brown hand waiting to toss

them one by one, into open beaks. smooth
swallow. thank you, brown body, for feeding me,
silver body, for nourishing me, is what i feel their

bodies say as they waddle back towards
their pond. splash. every body is a summer body.
furred and feathered, one winged, one-

eyed, brown eyes beholding sticks and flowers
and silver fish in the silver fish bucket. all our bodies
welcome all bodies nourished into the body

of summer.