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.
All right, I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a sucker
CHARLES YU is the author of three books, including the novel How to
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
Our first date is at an Italian restaurant in the Upper East Side with fake brick walls. The waiter sits us down and says, “Welcome to the old country.” The fake walls
Up yonder, the sky yawns openwide in a downpour. I suck greedy on the silken stem of one last God-white honeysuckle blossom & I watch the rain close in. The hot aircrackles
* * * * * * * * * * Each morning before breakfast my grandfather walked to the edge of the yard to raise the flag, to fly its colors near the heavens. My job was to hold the hard pack of
Accumulated through the season, like black exhauston white snow, winter cruelties linger—a dirtyepidermal merengue sealing in all that wouldotherwise melt within us; the closing of the bellowsthat precedes the closing case. We