After Qu Yuan

In my country, our insults give benefit of doubt. Nǐ yǒu bìng— 
You are sick—                                              as if there’s an

On that spirited Emmy night,
when the camera cut to you
and you radiating in red satin
said to the world
“It’s an honor just to be Asian”
I lost my breath.
Time stopped,
blindsided by this

oh longed-for, awaited beloved. she says my name
        wrong and makes me come hard. i catalog
lovers like this, coins in kitchen water. six years on,
         type thirsty into google

          (Dol Hareubang, Jeju Island, South Korea)

And there you sit, your basalt belly swollen heavy,
a gentle smile playing at your stone lips. To say I
sought you out would be a bald-faced

I wasn’t attracted to him at all but I was single and alone on New Year’s so I listened to him go on and on about birdwatching.

with the flies, small handfuls of sunlight, sensation only one degree
removed from excess.

What to press a heart to, what color pulled up from the earth.

I’m looking for my time machine.

One guy told me I didn’t look like my online photos while we sat al fresco in a bougie hotel in Venice. He smelled of vinegar. I ordered two crab sandwiches. I ate one and got the other to go.

When I return home, Samuelson is still in the living room with his friend Jake. I hear them talking as I enter our apartment through the back door. They don’t know I’m home yet, as I had stepped out

I steer the moon over my right shoulder, vertebrae
lodged above coyote ridge, winding plains road
I drive all the night’s hungers down. White light
clasping the devil’s backbone. Today snow

“Hey, are you up?”

"Bekya." This is my call. It echoes through the streets.

love does not begin and end the way we think it does. love is a battle; love is a war; love is a growing up
      -James Baldwin

when i say
I love my family
what i mean
is i worship
the

Lightning struck my grandparents’ house five times in as many years.

My 11-year-old son thinks Imagine Dragons is the greatest band in the world. Maybe ever. I learn about his new passion in the most disturbing way.

to survive
tenacious teeth held their nerve

It’s funny: I don’t recall ever hearing music around you, not in the condo and certainly not in the trailer.

1. And what does it mean to witness yourself, on television, dying?

            a. I no longer watch the news.
            b. I’ve exhausted every mirror in my home searching for my

I didn’t have my brother Patrick’s phone number until after my parents had been in a car accident.

The bartender gives relationship advice in the alley behind the bar every Thursday night while the piano player does her thing on the baby grand.

Yes, my mother loved Pooh, but as far as I know her love was platonic.

Gender in the Long 19th Century ends at 4 p.m., which leaves enough time to raid the liquor store on Cowley Road. A and K and I go early, J and S join later.

The rats have eaten the grain again, and the men need a new solution. We’ve already exhausted the usual methods of dealing with rats: traps, prayers, and cats. Our town has many cats, but they simply

We’re sitting in a pit. It’s deep, well above our heads—a half-finished bunker, really, begun in the heady days when imagined snipers lurked behind every dune...

I know that I am going to die.

While sitting in the parking lot waiting for masked employee to bring your items out to your trunk you watch customers walk into the store. Count how many are wearing masks versus not. Watch them laughing.

so much of what I feel is strain and restraint, not
strength. I feel so much of my days are in want;