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
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
They bounced quarters in the bars of Brittany and old Spain, and before them Greeks flung the lees from their cups, accuracy portending intimacy with whomever the victor was besotted. But with
Dreamscapes from the Atlas of Coming and Going VII Because Ayyappa Paniker wrote, the broken words that fade out, pieces of murmur float downfrom the ceiling fan. Almost forgotten–the blinds slatting streetlight
The live-room of the studio feels lived in. By this point in the session, the floor is barely there, snaked with cables and cases and mics. Miller Lite cans, potato chips, the
Was it the size—the width of wings, veined & spread, of abdomen, antenna—that invitedyour gentlest reach? Even through my tinted windows, rolling down West as I was, I could feelyour hesitation equal
The riverbanks pass by, are delivered to us: wildflowers, cliffsides; the endless water-train rushing through (“…the Green sweeps…”). “Just like walking the plank,” you remind me: “no need to rush,” swatting at