Asian Pen Name*

Mine is Kien,
which is useful
in cases
where I need
to prove
I am who I say
I am,
like the time
a cop pulled me
over and said
Sir, do you know
why you

Dear Katie

The movie we watched the night you told me you were leaving your husband for a girl with skin rough as a butcher’s block no storm could ever smooth clean. When sharks were falling from

Even his sacred biosphere (of anime, video games, Oedipal and teen porn, poststructuralist psychobabble, and grad school fellowships) can’t save him from the critical intervention of the collapsing world.

He removed a wad of fabric from under the bed, pulling on boxers and an Anthrax t-shirt. I winced at the Anthrax logo—I knew better than to fuck guys into thrash metal—too late now.

Being There

Describing my body is easy
because I do not know what it looks like.

From above, I imagine my face
when it experiences a thrill.

There could be more to what I’m looking

I wondered what my mother would say about the gun, and then I wondered it out loud. M gave me a look I was too worn out to interpret.

Red Teeth

Left work early to meet delivery peeps at my building. 100 weeks ago we ordered a couch. Tell ya, I've never seen two guys more pissed off to have to deliver a couch. It was like they

But if it's anything like years passed it'll boil down to something real simple. Start drinking as soon as the coffee is done. Bottles of beer and wine. We'll wrap ourselves up in blankets to stave off the cold. Too cheap to turn on the portable radiators we use to heat our place. Her parents will call. We'll feign sobriety. A hard thing to do at 10:00 a.m. with wine-stained lips.

I had never considered practicing polyamory, so when my girlfriend suggested it to me, I didn’t know what to say.

Outside

I keep finding myself loitering in the snow, watching strangers clink their glasses through the window's frosted glare. In my Midwest apartment I am always scrolling through photos of

Her parents, Mary and Don, were overcome first by grief and then by caution: they purchased fire extinguishers and flame retardant blankets, put the fire department on speed dial and plugged the holes in the nursery wall with corks, so that the angry neighbors could not look in and make a spectacle of their only child. Julia was their everything

How Come No One On Twitter Is Talking About This

The eye   a camera humming across the top of the earth : cavern  
gully    ravine    gorge    Far below    a tiny man jumps into a tiny

Some hours pass, and nobody has impressed her

I didn’t say sorry, because it was hard to explain. Sorry I felt the way I did, absolutely. But not sorry I did it. I tried to make him understand.

Before we entered the most raved about amusement park in the world, we went into the woods nearby . . . 

I only want to read erased fucking.

John’s hands are on the wheel, very still, and he’s looking straight ahead at the dark yellow lines of Route 66.

i can tell what age he lost his virginity

I’m just going to give up on these capitalist dreams and buy my self some land and a goat. 

The Millennial aspect is important because, like many Millennials, its protagonist does not wear labels easily.

just ugly things I don’t want to look at.

You mean to say, “hello” or “good morning,” but you know that, between us, that would be strangely inappropriate before our morning cup of coffee

This story is a fresh take on the proverbial phrase: go the extra mile for someone else. 

It starts like this, the saddest story I know does. It starts with me and it starts with my son.