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
My knees pop and crackle like a fireplace as I kneel at her feet on the carpeted floor. I flinch—my body suddenly feels too crooked, too misshapen to be here.She smiles like redemption,
Medellín There is no metaphor for the remainsof a bombed car in a basketnor for the Shepard lying beside thema roach writhing between his pawsnor for Rocío kicking hima cigarette between her
I can’t understand why I persist to wander around / the tragic nature of my conception / why I can’t walk away / like one who boxes up the past / turns
On the day I get junk mail addressed to youfor the first time since you moved out, I also find a clump of your hairin one of the cabinets, under the pots
After Arthur Sze Here, the first Ralph leaves his skin clinging to the cinder block wall. Here, Ralph hangs his ghost by the mouth from between the
my dad and i spit the same blood. thunderstorms roll to the sound of our bodiescontracting television fevers. my family goes to church the same way, hair greasy, spines stooped, iphones frying
NEW ORLEANS IS FORSAKEN THIS TIME OF YEAR a cartoon cigar smoking a cartoon cigarette with a look of rancid terror on its filter-face. you good? i’m good. nails bitten down low
He comes into the Pluckers—hot.He hugs me, lifts me off the ground.Swaps out his Aviators & tac glovesfor a paper bib. This freshly minted Alamo Ranger?He’s buying.Right now, he’s on dogwatch—the shit
The chalk creaks in agony on the blackboard.We hate this double English. Still not evenmidway into the first period that happensonly on Tuesdays. The minutes grind onlike stilt walkers on my new
Daily promise of blankness Scraping against whiteness Not loneliness but loneliness The house is not the room is not the bed is not the moment is not Cold nestling in after My
