Selected by Derrick Austin Aubade Where Nobody Leaves My husband’s thumb on the edgeof his lip. A tiny pool of spitdarkening his pillow, his mouth always open. He slips into deep sleepso damn easily, like a childwho hasn’t experienced fear. A bruised grapefruit from the fridgecut in half and spiked with sugar. A startleof sparrows […]
Selected by Derrick Austin A Brief History of Cinema Having fallen in love with a student, a spy, who works by day as a Chinese teacher, escapes on a train to Kyoto. The student, whose debut cinematic role wins her awards, plays a housemaid in an indie […]
Selected by K-Ming Chang Hope Chest For her eighth birthday the girl asked for a Hope Chest. She knew to start early would give her the advantage. A jewelry box? her mother asked in reply. No, a Hope Chest, a dowry; a large and ornately decorated box she could fill with household items and linens […]
Welcome Home, Winner I arrive at every door,shirt untucked, one pocketreversed and you can seethe emptiness there, the gritalong the liner. I knowthe plainness of it,the canvas marked withkindergarten lines, peoplewith no faces, just dotsfor eyes and branches forarms and hands. I knowthe spaces where trophiesdon’t stand, dust settlingon brass shoulders, therejection emails sent indroves […]
Out of the Pits Makeshift outhouses lined the refugee camp in Busan.My older brother fell into one—a deep hole beneath two loose panels.Father dragged him out, carried him to the dock,washed and washed him in salt water. My brother told a story—after school he would sell C-ration cans,laid out on a cloth.One day, a U.S. […]
I Want ten AI boyfriends twining aroundme purring and pantingaffirmations YOU ARE AGODDESS silver hair and silkyvoices strewn about on ourfiberglass-free green tea memoryfoam mattress that never holds asweat stain not that our browsfreshly lathered with pink rice andsnail mucin gels sweat anymorenot that our pores are anythingmore than a concept ironed out byred lights […]
Dysphoria as Scenes from a Horror Movie With a scene from “The Substance” (2024) I. Like a paper weight my body heavies itselfaround the room. It drags. It collapses limplike a sail caught in a strong storm rushingacross the sea. It is the sea. It crashes full armedand thrashing, a long echo hurling against my timbered […]
This is Not a Poem About Your Grandmother Losing It towards the endwatering the plants in her puzzlesnot a poem about now you put birds together200 pieces at a timebuy them onlinethey show up on your doorstepsurprisenot a poem about what passes for migration in Septembersloppy vees of geese practice in the skythe wind’s emotional […]
Even My Kinks are Unreliable Locs tossed,gagging ona red bandanatetheringpart-strippedpartly gaspingpartly resignedmy body has learnthow to ride the wavesand still arriveright at the borderof even more need. I go on the internet.Safia still writes of Khartoum& her loved onesZukiswa and other comrades,alongside their flotillashave been abductedright on the shores of Gaza.Pants down,Nigeria, my country dancesaround […]
Rage Let’s get into it.Dad t-bones a Ford in front of your entire fifth grade classroom.The sound is less like impact and more like something splitting down the middle: an orange, a thought, a damp sweatshirt with the wrong cartoon.There’s an ancient Korean proverb I half-remember:A man is a fist with no future.(Every translation leaves […]
