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
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in love even when I cannot feel it, I believe in god even when he is silent -written on
I picture perfectthe moon’sabrasions,orange over Malibuthat night. Ocean blue and crestingin Dad’s blurry footagebehind his father,face paintedlentigo. This was yearsbefore his fall, beforehe only spoke in no’sand wa’s. His skullintact and helmet-free,his
Homecoming On shattering glass water slips
Last, um, my friend Sam let me come over. Sit in the sun, aim my face at the sky. Shootin’ the whatever on the porch, while he ducked under his self-made tarp tent. There
On the faculty hiring committee, I march,demanding they acknowledge meand my virtues. I tell them I am decent.I never thought about killing someoneexcept myself, even then I didn’t do it.Despite myself &
San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley on a rainy Friday night. I’m driving home from a coffee shop. Wet roads on autumn nights. Pungent orange. Bright, green wings. “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens.
Marcus and I share a two-bedroom garage apartment, and he has filled it with horses—some are small figurines with stout legs and straining muscles, some are broad, shiny busts, with veiny eyes
Clanking trams pass my windows opened to the street. In a mason jar almost full with water, I place roses, given by friends, in sun atop the kitchen table. A
One way to measure the passage of time is to count the number of days since you last had sex. I’ve lost count. I only know it’s
I am driving west, away from New Mexico, where Kai and I had made our home, when the shrubs suddenly give way to rock: Cliff faces scarred with eras past. Steep buttes