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
Because her local news was buzzing in the background of the phone call. Because the voicesof the anchors wavered as the tally ticked & skipped from double to triple digits while we
The hunger to forget, a flockof questions, a flight of memories.Finishing my life might look like thesephotographs my mother sent me,annotated in her shaky hand with names,leaves that will outlive us all.
Food i can’t eat: Sesame seeds Drumstickchicken All the seasons and the change in climate Clawed chestrising and crumbling Smothered in a bed of mole The moldgrowing on a Cold San Francisco
and a womb sounds too closeto wound. Every time this happens, I forget the sacred pocketwhere you carried me, buried me like a seed in a citrus grove. Suddenly, I amcrashing my
On the morning of 9/11, six hours before the first plane would crash into the north tower, my cousin woke up and said to his mother: something terrible will happen to the
I loathed the place from the first hour — indeed, I loathed it even before I had stepped across its threshold, which should tell you something about the mind’s sick propensity for
When we came out of our apartment the humidity punched us in the face like we’d unsealed a wind tunnel or opened a blast door. In my mind a deep, otherworldly howl
Driving through a cold spring drizzle, I noticed a young woman, smoking. She was standing under the eaves of a non-descript office building, wearing heels and a short, clingy black dress, her arms, neck,
Still Life with Lack of Nesting The oaks in New Orleans were restless, their rootslike fat fingers rummaging under sheets, pushing sidewalk up to sea level. The streetcar was free—or at least,
Somewhere in the endless spill of yellow sand between Phoenix and Tucson, we drove in silence, the roar of the long highway lulling me to sleep. With my head against the window,