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
It arrives on my doorstep and I unbox the thing like it’s radioactive, and for all I know, it could be. The wonders of modern medicine are beyond me, and bad news
I. After six years of dating, after your fourth breakup with Tall Glass of Water, the water heater explodes and floods your things, the things you have finally moved from your coveted storage unit
The skin on my thumb is worn and beginning to blister. It has been pressed hard against the metal edge of the hose since noon, desperate to make water come out faster,
The first girl I kissed pushedme against the serrated brickssame color as her busted lip.Transfer student. Eyes familiar withdarkness akin toMidwestern stormcell—the untitled blue I like best. I counted the seconds aftershe
It does not matter if you’re rich in life, As long as you’re rich in heaven. My father, in heaven, smokes Camels. In the spirit months we feast together.Mother plates chicken cutlet, fish soup, Sticky
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was as of yet undefined. The Word had freckles across the bridge of her nose that only showed up in the sunshine, and
my last meal as a girl I dined onsnow. the sky snared my teethbut everyone pretended not to see. the snow was luminous and wet.a blue cat pooled in the eyes ofthe
As a child a painted turtle found me, so I made a cage for him, but by the next morning he had disappeared. I assumed that the turtle was a him because
here’s a story about the woman i love: in my sleep, we wander the museum, & she points out
With a line after Matthea Harvey There’s a house on my palm. it sways with the wind. in our basement, my parents store records in an old crate. they sit reminiscing while
