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
About a month ago I heard her in a dog’s bark. It was likely a Tuesday or Wednesday morning when I heard her voice in a dog’s bark. I locked the door
I live a quiet life now. By “quiet,” I mean, in part, uneventful—depending on one’s definition of “event.” My husband says, “I never needed ‘exciting.’ I don’t need to get away from
Once upon a time, when a flatbread made from jowar flour called the bhakri was an item of great value, when all your neighbours were distant or close relatives, when the king
Once upon a time there was a whale who no one understood. She swam up and down the Pacific, calling out in a pitch so high that other whales ignored her. Once
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water.Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.Now, water can flow or it can crash.Be water. —Bruce Lee 1. When the lineup
LM Brimmer is a co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride (2019); their essays and poetry have recently appeared in The Colorado Review, Heavy Feather Review, Tiny Spoon Lit
I’ve always balked at playing scalesbut I’ll stand on a girderhipshot in floral board shorts,a vintage weirdo pokingthe membrane between here and now.⠀ I need my sea green eyeshadesto scan this fiddly
My heart, a jackalbecoming wild,for beholdingat a distance.⠀ I wake up unrelenting.I stay that way forever.⠀ No sound but a sirenfrom my mouth.I sit in the stainand gnash at myself.⠀ All animal,
A Short Film Starring Me at a Bathhouse I have a line of men waiting to see me. Inside, their hands extend when I walk down halls.I can see their palms glisten
Mending I watch her delicately wielda needle, coax threadthrough a beaten pairof my father’s Levis.We’re in the family room,with all its books. The old oak tableis covered in charcoal sketches,badly disfigured handswe
