Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
Jess Yuan’s Slow Render–winner of the 2022 Airlie Prize for poetry–is situated in a pre-post-truth world where capitalism, imperialism, and technology are still calculable and grieved on human terms, at a human scale. With the keen eye of an architect, Yuan organizes her first full-length collection and the speaker’s lyric unlayering in three parts, resulting in a decomposition where we encounter the speaker’s gradual derealization…
Wrist wheedled from out honed steel, hot-washed to a surgical shimmer, You glow Pistachio.Paddles and scoops, marble-top ready, hot water ensconced,Get doled nocciola.Glass shielded in bins like incubated babies, pastel- swaddled line-up in bassinets,What a summons.A queue worthy of cordons, in flip-flops, heels, and nearlyno clothing, point-ing fingers, palms resting messy on plexi-glass, sweating away, senses ramped up to an ogle, primed to envelop your charms.Taste that quick-fix return.To gravel-etched knees, fresh bloodied chins,…
In my memory my mother isin the shallows, maybeshin-deep, swishing minnows into a blue bucket.In my older memories my sister was helping, because she was;but we don’t speak anymore, sonow she isn’t. At least,now I don’t remember itthat way. In my mother’s memory,the next thing that happens is an open mouth. She pulls my sister, who isn’t there,from the sea. She screams. How long have there been sharks at this beach? In…
I Writing about the ways your accent is at war with itself is like taking a knife to your tongue and splitting it into two unequal parts and then telling everyone what you did. One part of your tongue is who you have always known, a thick Port-Harcourt-Lagos-Nigerian accent that says, “Ogbeni, where you dey go?” and sprinkles “ha,” and “ehen” in conversation like thyme…
Something about Dizzy playing Tin Tin Deo is driving a city streeta slow in the summer whale of a carwhen even without accelerating you are making every lightand the song is both your driving and on the radio at the same time: and it’s the shadow and shine of early evening in ticker pickets: the apartment buildings, the gapsthe cross streets. And it’s a wild assed cloud racearound the buildingsthe…