After Jennifer S. Cheng 1: the sea captured in a glass 2: a homophone for having enough for leftovers, a synonym for abundance 3: the fish, who have already forgotten you. It’s not personal 4: where memory fails, there’s still imagining 5: you. Not as an ocean but outside 6: glass and/or acrylic
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The Arrest, in all its surreal narrative trappings, supercars, and Hollywood theatrics, wants to know if words can save us in a dystopia.
Winner of the EXTINCTION Essay Contest, selected by Lacy M. Johnson
CHARLES YU is the author of three books, including the novel How to
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water.Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.Now, water can flow or it can crash.Be water. —Bruce Lee 1. When the lineup
LM Brimmer is a co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride (2019); their essays and poetry have recently appeared in The Colorado Review, Heavy Feather Review, Tiny Spoon Lit
Once upon a time, when a flatbread made from jowar flour called the bhakri was an item of great value, when all your neighbours were distant or close relatives, when the king
Once upon a time there was a whale who no one understood. She swam up and down the Pacific, calling out in a pitch so high that other whales ignored her. Once
My heart, a jackalbecoming wild,for beholdingat a distance.⠀ I wake up unrelenting.I stay that way forever.⠀ No sound but a sirenfrom my mouth.I sit in the stainand gnash at myself.⠀ All animal,
A Short Film Starring Me at a Bathhouse I have a line of men waiting to see me. Inside, their hands extend when I walk down halls.I can see their palms glisten
Mending I watch her delicately wielda needle, coax threadthrough a beaten pairof my father’s Levis.We’re in the family room,with all its books. The old oak tableis covered in charcoal sketches,badly disfigured handswe
I’ve always balked at playing scalesbut I’ll stand on a girderhipshot in floral board shorts,a vintage weirdo pokingthe membrane between here and now.⠀ I need my sea green eyeshadesto scan this fiddly
Having a car in the city is shameless if you really think about it. I would even go as far as to say it makes you a sinvergüenza, as my mother would
Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan, 1997 ⠀ Snow——the silencewithin silences——a flickering streetlamp——your gloved hand——⠀⠀ Р е м о н т scrawled in Cyrillic on an abandoned shack——the good-night kiss——[⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ] ——then the small, fused heat