Minca Borg (she/her or they/them) joined our MFA in Spring ‘21. She has a background in sustainability, writing, and sciences, and a great interest in journalism. She is a dual genre student (poetry and creative nonfiction), who is curious about all of life and nature and science, loves exploring the borderlands between genres and the cracks between different ideas and sensory things.

Minca is finishing a book of poetry and studying literary creative nonfiction currently with Jennie Rothenberg Gritz. She lives with a menagerie of chickens, dogs, and cats, not in that order of importance, loving them all. She is often found at local farmer’s markets or in the woods with her creature companions. She bakes excellent pies, cookies, lasagnas, and more. She can best be contacted by paper airplane.

Publications:

Minca’s article, “Juneteenth in Fairfield: Carnegie Museum Unveils New Underground Railroad Exhibit,” was recently published in The Iowa Source, a regional magazine. You can read all of Dominica Borg’s pieces in The Iowa Source here.

Two of Minca’s poems were included in Contestoga Zen, an anthology by Conestoga Zen press edited by Rustin Larson. You can read the poems below:

The Atheist Burns His Duck

It's a morose affair -
A half eaten duck, found floating in the pond.
The man who hatched and raised him,
Called him Peep,
Has fished him out.
The others - Cleo, Rambo, Meime i- waddle
Across the green grass to pay their respects
Where the soft body lies, neck limp, hindquarters missing
Besides a rusted metal barrel.
The man goes into the workshop,
Returns with a trash bin of paper and cardboard.
He neither cries nor says prayers
Mouth closed in expressionless solemnity.
He stuffs the rusted bin with trash,
Lights a fire. Glances at Peep's remains
As the first black smoke wafts from the barrel.
He feeds the fire and gently places Peep in the middle
Covering him with wads of paper and small cardboard boxes
A burial reminiscent of a barbeque.
He watches the uneven spurts of orange flame,
Nudges the boxes in place,
Heaves a sigh.
"He was a good duck."
Then he feeds the mourners small pieces of hotdog,
Softly imitates their quacks

Ode To The Greasy Taco

Praise this fried flour, soft and pale
Disconnected from the Maize original-
The multicolored kernels so revered
By Ancients who never knew wheat.

Praise this taco devoid of cumin,
Pepperless, served on a styrofoam plate
By a cherubian blonde at a diner
Surrounded by muddy spring cornfields.

Praise this glistening styrofoam plate
Derived from oil pressed in the depths of the earth,
Marvel of geology, chemistry, mass production.
This styrofoam will outlast my body,
Its particles more indestructible than the flesh of Jesus.
Hail the plate that will last longer than this century
And all our religions-bent and cracked in a landfill
With eternal life.

Praise to this crumbling beef, sprinkled
Across my lap and around my plate
Spilling out of its deep fried cocoon
With every bite.

Praise to the cattle who stand in their muddy pens,
To the breezes that comfort them
To the sun gazing longingly across their cold backs
In the biting ice winds.

Praise to the electric shock.
Praise to the people bloodied by slaughter work
Who go home to their spouses and children,
Rise again to the weight and stench of another day.

Praise to the field workers and the flavorless lettuce,
To the bright juicy tomato slices
Beautiful yet austere -
Indistinguishable in taste from their leafy bedfellows.

Praise to the $20 bill, to the face of Andrew Jackson
Stern and indignant that white men should eat a food
Of savage origins, that "taco" is not an English word
However detached from its roots it has become.

Praise to the restaurant without a website
That draws rows of pickups lining both sides of an obscure road
In a town long forgotten by city folk, railroads, and highways
Without gas station, without even a volunteer fire department
A restaurant and a handful of houses-
Houses that altogether hold fewer people than the restaurant can contain.

Praise to a tired and rainy day
To fried food and microwaved nachos
To being able to go anywhere in less than half an hour
To the metal fork that may one day be found by an archaeologist,
But more likely will be buried in sediment,
Subsumed by the earth from which it was mined.

Praise to the folly of human miracles,
To industrialization, to semis and long roads,
To loneliness, companionship, margaritas
Plastic manufacturers and silo builders
Whose shining branded monuments punctuate the gravel roads.
Praise to the greasy $3 taco, to the Midwesterners,
To the last small businesses that survive by word of mouth
To the towns too small to print on roadmaps

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