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
The Wildcat Den The sunset drapes gold and pink over the city,melting against adobe walls,where murals breathe storiesof ancestors who once danced in the dust.The scent of carne asada curls through the
Dad teaches me how to make rice: “Measure the rice with your heart, then fill the water to your knuckle.” The tap fills the black pot as a cloud of starch rises.
I’d just hopped on an airplane, on my way home from a tennis weekend with friends, when my daughter, Elana called—a phone call that would send me reeling. “M-o-o-o-o-o-m-m-m-m-m,” she wailed. It
Divorced and in my fifties, I entered a relationship with Ben. At 64, he was compact, attractive, and also divorced, with wavy gray hair, and hips even slimmer than mine. Ben’s tender,
It’s nearly dark and the moon’s unrisen.The brightest stars shine through a scrim of clouds and fog. I am watching for you.Most of the neighbors have gone inside for dinner and television
And if I did mean somethingcoded: waterI can’t walk on, coastline charred from anothernameless fire blazinga red wood, photographsrecovered in the oceanoff an archipelago, preserving for posteritythe dinghies and the sheep.And if
That summer, I imagined myself as a dolphin, porpoising through the water from one side of the pool to another, arms outstretched, my hands a prow, my ponytail like a fin. I’d
My father, as an untamed young hunter and fisher, was camping near a stream when the volcano Mt. St. Helens blew on May 18, 1980. Far from phone lines and newspapers, he
1. Where to break is to begin ⠀⠀⠀⠀a. ⠀⠀a tectonic plate promises a shift ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ i. ⠀⠀Greek: tektōn “carpenter, builder” ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ii. ⠀⠀as a point where things start
Poem Beginning with Stage Fright and the Last Drop of Blood If most burned-out stars claim a retirement home in the heavens. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If we’re always acting understudy to ourselves, and especially when