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
Apocalyptic Date Idea #1 What if we kissed for the first time and I tried to stop it—sprinting up the street, scraggly-bearded, soot-skinned, tearsacross my face, minutes until the portal to my
it’s not the child
Child of my body, you are from me. I gave birth to you. Yet you are from another time,another place. My mother died when I was a toddler. My father remarried and
against the shed, my bike leans, rusting. i pick off my legs a handful of sand spurs. i save them in a jar. i save everything that cuts me, from paper to
When the Editor Asks if the Suicidal Ideation is a Persona in his rejection email I appreciate it honestlyI do but I wish he was right that that endless tunnel was just
One empties and fills; the other trickles. Both keep me afloat.
War exists in beautiful places.In the arms of a galaxy, symbiotic stars swallow each otherand in the shallows of a reef, a four-armed sea star spreadsover a shell like a chromosome. Scarred,
not the Titan, but my home built without a bomb shelter,and built to house bombs. Explosions—unlike implosions—happen over the course of felt moments. Skirts are blown upwardas Trinitrotoluene flushes cheeks yellow. Gravel
I’m pretty sure I got the job at Midnight Express because I didn’t ask if it was illegal. I wasn’t background checked, as far as I know. I didn’t sign any non-disclosure
Head out, highway highA continuous zephyrEl Dia Previo synced Admiration for the asterismsPastel colored moonglowing Measured burning glancesPinkies linked, head cradled Zaira is an emerging writer from Pennsylvania. As a queer Mexican
