Deluge: A Chinese Almanac
“Yet as / the tide climbed, I wondered: when the / floods arrived, would my prince be beside / me, willing to swim? Or would he, as my / mother’s bones hinted, flee?”
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
Prayer Circle
By Sa Whitley
“Miss Mary, she say, God is good, and Jon gonna be alright. My late Grandma / Dorothy in my dream say, Jon Boy, he alright, and her hands covered high / yellow in batter from frying us”
The Peasantry
By Weijia Pan
“I could read history from the back of your reddened skull. / You could read me directly, reflected in the eyes of passers-by.”
The Other Mothers
“My body reached its logical conclusion, red blood / over white feathers.”
a bird-riding grief
“a tabernacle, where memories (a) constellate, (b) dispel, tweeting for (a) healings, (b) witherings from their gods—”
The Word that Burns on the Tongue
By G.R. Kramer
“Have I not seen how its star fire / lavishes itself into every corner, peers / into the guiltiest chamber of our hearts?”
A Celebrity Couple Divorces On TV
“The couple looks on, a pair of eyes / melting like discarded chocolate, // furtive.”
The Ram
By Jane Hahn
“A round-horned shadow chewing on trash by the side of the road, white flank torched by passing headlights—sears a negative onto your retinas. The ram eats everything.”
Ortolan, Drowning
“Something low and feathery // would rise from his throat as / if he had choked on a bird and that bird”