In “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich and “Pearl Diver” by Mitski, the speaker narrates a deep-sea dive during which the diver undergoes a shift in identity as a result of a quest. The speaker in each text describes the dive, drawing lines of...
He never walks by. He could always walk by. I don’t forget that. Behind the curtains, my mind runs his voice through my brain. This street is empty, and I am pale behind my curtains. He never walks by, but he’ll never see what’s in the...
There by the wind-wake and diesel fumes, peeling off the road I can chase a younger version of me to the playground It’s dark; I can barely see the swings, but once I’m there I’m a ghost a dark sweatshirt on a pendulum, a metronome of flesh and bone...
While popular music is dominated by artists embracing party culture and —in the view of neoliberal morality— its subsequent vice of drug use, Kid Cudi’s 2009 hit “Pursuit of Happiness (Nightmare)” examines the subject as a complicated matter. In collaboration with Ratatat and MGMT, the...
my nonna was the last to eat in her family, scooping bowls of pastina soup for her husband and children, hovering over the table in case there were pleads for more parmesan or pepper, serving seconds before she got her first; a comforting lunch turned lukewarm by the time she sits in the...
I let’s say: you are walking you are walking & you see exactly where the sidewalk stops & this is perfect you know exactly where one feeling end s & ano ...
“Do you remember us as children?” I don’t either, not entirely. I stood on tables singing and screaming poetry, so you must have been the quiet one. Now, turmeric stains my sleeves, and they braid dandelions around my fingers. Now, you’ve been experimenting with facial hair, and I’m too cautious to comment...
When I was born I changed my mother’s hair (What happens to a body is a daughter’s fault). I drank salt water mixed by a propellor On the back of a boat, Ate grapefruit my grandfather bought accidentally, Took a 500 a month stipend And some bullet points, Pushed on the doors I...
my first is perhaps the most foreign, yet it is the one of home. Cantonese. She lights the path forward, a promise of return, a call of the motherland beckoning us on. She brings home wayward sailors paddling peeling kayaks packed with families, Canadian-born. Almost at the shore, upset, upstart, unsure, the...
It was the first Winter with you. We bought a Christmas tree, a real one, the type that my mother would never let me have as a child. Once we had lugged it from the store and positioned it in the corner of the dining...