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
Read More2026 Memory Contest Winner Braced Against the Current Flies circle my cheeks as we drifton rafts in the leaf mantled pool,eyes squinting or shut against the sunand growling thunderclouds.We are trying to
2026 Memory Contest Runner Up Dil Soz— the one whose heart burns for otherswhen witnessing their pain.Harder than a rockmore fragile than a rose. In the beloved’s absencelove fades and grows— I
Pop Rocks My sister and I are playingoutside. She opens a small packof rock candy. She grins then pours some inmy hand. She whispers,“Close your mouth.Don’t chew.” The sound of rain in
free verse copper wires gnawed bareas thick as a little finger ready for scrapthat’s the best of what’s in my poems and in additionbreathover the coal cathedral of a half-ruined minedaytime moments airy
Up yonder, the sky yawns openwide in a downpour. I suck greedy on the silken stem of one last God-white honeysuckle blossom & I watch the rain close in. The hot aircrackles
* * * * * * * * * * Each morning before breakfast my grandfather walked to the edge of the yard to raise the flag, to fly its colors near the heavens. My job was to hold the hard pack of
Accumulated through the season, like black exhauston white snow, winter cruelties linger—a dirtyepidermal merengue sealing in all that wouldotherwise melt within us; the closing of the bellowsthat precedes the closing case. We
When I wear sunglasses all day, I forget what the world actually looks like There is a pool with an ocean view. Chlorine mixes with beachmusk and sunblock and hotdogs.Metal grating digs
To think there is such a thingas a good dayis to neglect the sun’s eternal indifferenceto the clouds and fogthat bottle it up invisibleand block its raysfrom reaching our foreheads. What kindof
the newspaper boy once told melove is loud. scream three times each day, and someone will at least feed you: sugar-snap peas thrown, showeringlike hail, macadamia nutsscattered like words, even safflower seeds sprinkling the nest of