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.
CHARLES YU is the author of three books, including the novel How to
Winner of the EXTINCTION Essay Contest, selected by Lacy M. Johnson
Siri Pleas Not I, not tonight. Not even halfway homewhen this notification brakes your black bikebefore the lichened gate of the communitylabyrinth— where now, we mustusher each other down the same trepid
The sun reflecting off a chrome bumper discarded by the side of the road like the wrapper of a fast food hamburger momentarily blinded Granny El Bee, and in that moment she
Pop Rocks My sister and I are playingoutside. She opens a small packof rock candy. She grins then pours some inmy hand. She whispers,“Close your mouth.Don’t chew.” The sound of rain in
When you go to Little Caesars on Christmas Eve, ignore the feelings of indignity as you trudge through the snow in the poorly plowed parking lot with the stiff-legged gait of someone
ㅤㅤㅤYou are plum blossoms,fruit to come. You are cream-ㅤㅤㅤfilled, dream-spent. We are eggand egg, ovum and ovum, open-ㅤㅤㅤmouthed. Open-mouthed. Youare calendula and roseㅤㅤㅤwatering my tongue. Youare brow in pain, bitten-ㅤㅤㅤflesh at the
Eyes towards the skyㅤㅤㅤit’s hard to discern what’s realWhen all is bathed in stardust It covers your skinlike the glitter gel you covered your body inat twentyㅤㅤㅤㅤsweating out your traumaon the dancefloor
I’ve seen them dart among the cattailsat the slightest shadowlike commas scattering over the surfaceof a page. And I have sadly senta few of them to their deathslast summer, when I ranthrough
Shellac Cicadas sing:The world doesn’t want us! Nobody wants us!I thought chewing felt the same.I am finding myself to be stranger and more fragile, like a dog that bites first.Bad dogBad godblame
free verse copper wires gnawed bareas thick as a little finger ready for scrapthat’s the best of what’s in my poems and in additionbreathover the coal cathedral of a half-ruined minedaytime moments airy
(*fourteen unverified claims) Ghost Dads exist, believe you me. Fathers, living and no longer, conjure equivalent quality spirits. Their shadows extend indefinitely across villages, shires, and provinces. Across the block. Across the