[In every life, a moment or two, for heaven’s sake]

by Kevin Phan

 

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In every life, a moment or two, for goodness sake. “Pregnant jade rabbit enters purple heaven.” Oooooooohhhhhhhhh! Why’ve I never encountered such mysteries before? Teeth marks we leave in the world’s strange heart. Unasked, unthanked. Upstairs, asleep, my roommates–heart-to-heart–dream into the collective. Orson teaches 300 walruses synchronized swimming under a skyline dancing icy neon moons. Brooke dreams of oranges burning angry at the bottom of a well. Miranda wades waist-deep in hot pink, sticky goldfish. Present moments furred with last night’s dreams. “I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree,” says Leonard Cohen. At what point does living become surreal?

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KEVIN PHAN is a Vietnamese-American graduate of the University of Michigan with an MFA in Creative Writing in 2013 and from the University of Iowa with a BA in English Literature in 2005. He is a former Helen Zell Writers’ Program Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan. His work has been featured (or is forthcoming) in Columbia Review, Poetry Northwest, Georgia Review, Conjunctions (online), Crab Orchard Review, Fence, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, SubTropics, Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. His first collection of poetry will be published through Colorado State University’s Center for Literary Publishing in 2020.