Poetry

By Chen PoyuTranslated from Taiwanese Mandarin by Nicholas Wong A miniature gacha machine was moved to the sitting room during the Christmas season. If my sister and I behaved well, we would earn a chance to turn its crank. In each capsule, there was a note announcing our reward, usually some small privilege. “Sleeping with …

Circle the correct word to complete the sentence. Choose the option that best fits the scenario. There may be multiple correct answers. Dear sister, I have been (missing/underwater) for the past five days. They say the (sickness/noise) is coming from my brain. It may be contagious. Don’t worry. I’ll cover my mouth when I (cough/talk). …

A responsory poem in honor of Stone Butch Blues Come to Buffalo–to this cold,through the chain link: — — — approach(the fence) / / / — — — caught.But I was here beforeand I felt its warmthwhen nature held mecloseat the cannerywhen I saidcome home to me.We never left:still mad as hell,s/hes, he-shes, zes.You put …

Manisha Sharma is a winner of the Causeway Lit Poetry Award, a semifinalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review Poetry Chapbook contest, and is shortlisted for the Laureate Prize. Her fiction is longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Cream City Review Fiction Contest, a semifinalist for The American Short(er) Fiction …

V after v after v— birds scale the skyline in the morning, but how many at night? Immigrants pray every day for the right door to open beside their children. See, someone places three in the middle of a road. Nobodyis looking. How many at night? Boys and girls disappear through doors in twos. Night …

My friend, how close are we again? My father and I, how closein prayer now? Mother, what’s going on— how come people swearforecasts are wrong— as though they’re not standing right here in the toiletries aisle with the rest of Brooklyn? As close as bronze oaks kissing in your second-floor windows— as close as Ryerson …

Sparrows rush together at once,a terror of sight when they sense winter.The leaves have gone, the sky is water-marked.Herons, like maids, in white.You are alone in the woods. And yesterday, all beetles crawled offinto the earth’s bowels.The bees and penguins have flown. The birds folded up their wings.The sky’s sidewalks are empty. Winter is making …

You contested everything. You fought for & against everything. The sense, the senseless, The gradually making sense, the already perfect Sense— you fought. Stubbornly. You fought. & that is why today, today makes no sense. Today, we upturned the rumpled sheets In search for everything stubborn & persistent Like you, your mirror in the world’s …

Aesthetics, or,land acknowledgment goes here, or,offhand, or,inside jokes, orLes Miz surviving three hours on five chords, or,starving, or,the Americans have named kettling, or,national endowment, or,drag regalia might only be a smile, or,cross-eyed in grief, orplaying with abandon, or,is everyone aliveis what i’m asking, or,blackouts end action, or,incite it, or,if this were France, oh if this …

I heard the impactin the sodden groundand was afraidI was not alone in the night.And then I wished I, alone, had heard something fantastic,black bear dislodging nestsin high-crowned treesor the thwackon trunk by antlers that promises more deer.I was awake with what I’d never see, curled in the pericarp of sleigh bed and duvet.In the …