The authors
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DetoNation
By Ocean Vuong
There’s a joke that ends with — huh?
It’s the bomb saying here is your father.
Now here is your father inside
your lungs. Look how lighter
the earth is — afterward.
To even write the word father
is to carve a portion of the day
out of a bomb-bright page.
There’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy
broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry
anymore. So I ran into the night.
The night: my shadow growing
toward my father.
Self-Portrait as So Much Potential
By Chen Chen
​
Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
Realizing I hate the word “sip.”
But that’s all I do.
I drink. So slowly.
& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.
I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic.
Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers.
She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.
They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.
The Price of Rain
By Franny Choi
The truth is that no man has taken anything
I didn’t give him. I mean, no man has taken
anything I claimed as my own. My body, my stink,
my land to plant in. It’s never been about the price
of lettuce. How many times have I taken something
that did not belong to me? Queen, queen, I croon,
pulling up handfuls of greens. My, my.
Property’s still theft. I let my wet skin slip
through the drainpipe. My mother says love,
in our family, means sacrifice. I thought,
if I lay my legs on the altar, I thought something
would come back to me. Mine, mine. I offered it,
being promised rain. Being told my wet was in
the common domain. I whispered, Our body, our legs,
our compost heap. I gave freely. I gave it for free,
thinking that made me wingèd–stork delivering herself
to herself. Look how free I am. Dowager Slut. Queen Regent.
Turns out, there are no synonyms for King. My lord,
my darling, my darkening sky. You can’t buy
a thunderstorm. Nor should you bring one back
from the dead. But I threw open the gates.
I invited them in. I said, Help yourselves. Then watched
as they went room to room, taking, emptying
the shelves, sucking marrow from the bones,
and overhead, the sky filled with rain.
Untitled, 2004
I counted 24 days since I first started writing. Love can’t be counted or re-
created but if I stay out in front of it, I can make space for myself. But then
I’m alone, no longer among the living. You urged me to look to myself, not
to identify with others,
their emotions, or needs. And I did that for 24 days. Each day, a bird hit my
window and reminded me that I once let them in too. If I give too much
away, it’s not the heart that is depleted but the eyes with all the noticing. My
eyes used to take up my entire head. Now they are two dots. It will take a
year for them to grow back. But when they do, they will no longer be able to
move. You once said, we are born as nouns not verbs. I emptied myself for 24
days and I have nothing to show you but two holes.
Hole is still a noun and a verb. So is desire, stroke, silence. After 24 days, I am
still trying to be a noun. Not help, question, or hope. Maybe hope is the door
of depression. How hard it is not to put wings on everything. Evening,
window, soul.
