Ode to the 10¢ Beer Night Riot (in which I was still dead a few spring days ago) The crows mark the princesses’ graves in Gongzhufen. Royalty is buried all about this city. Tieshizifen tell us this is the tomb of the Iron Lion, but no one knows the story now: a truth that became lore that became an empty name. A young neighbor writes terrible novels in the hopes that one might get picked up to be a terrible streaming series. It would give her enough to move out of her parents’ place. She has no desire to be the next Yu Hua or Mo Yan or whoever. She just wants to have her morning tea in peace.
Ode to Alan Smithee (in which Bryhtnoth taught each man his task)) A peacock in full fan does not worry about the day’s market. And Old Li is railing against late stage capitalism without calling it that: he has a different vocabulary for the familiar symptoms. His chess playing friends get fed up with him, as he’s been honing this argument for years. He’s not wrong, they say, but he might not be right. Ode to the Cybermen (in which the past was bound to the present and the present to aeons to come) On some distant beach, the tide is beating against the shore. This is the way of the world. Summer flings among the young are midpoint. The elderly no longer comment on their cuteness and await the separations that will surely come. Is this level of tiredness something Virgil forgot to show his pilgrim, or did he skip it on purpose because the journey had more meaning than the obvious ending?
Cover of Inkwell's literary zine Visions, issue 5. It's black and with, with text written in a circle around a centered clock with roman numerals
Very happy to have three poems in the latest issue of Inkwell's literary zine Visions.
