It is a miracle for people to love each other, in spite of the fact that people are people. We are so minute and small in this ocean of want. How we part like clouds nobody watches.Is there beauty in what’s unknown?I’m sitting at a cafe, alone, watching filled-out city buses run to death. Heads […]
Tag: literature
ARS POETICA AS NESTED MEMORY
Glad to say that my piece, ‘Ars Poetica as Nested Memory’, has been published in Cathexis Northwest Press. You can check it out here: https://www.cathexisnorthwestpress.com/ars-poetica-as-nested-memory/ https://www.cathexisnorthwestpress.com/may-19-valen-lim
BLUE
The taste of dish soap lingerson the rim of the teacup. You and I sit at crossroads, legsdangling over cliffs. This isan exercise in communicationby proxy, messages hiddenin the fold of an arm. Coltrane murmurs in the background likea roommate, and the televisionis switched off. This is timeless,this is the way we freeze-frame our lives, […]
As You Roamed The Earth, You Felt The Drying Skin of Age Itself
it is the waking that is the hardest. the first step in sleep deprivation: you learn you miss dreaming of holes, the spaces between lines, the gap between the train and platform. you dream of ways in which to die, how the train brushes against your feet, the space just big enough for your thigh. […]
13 Superstitions for a Damsel in Distress
On the backstreet home, watch out for black cats stalking your footsteps. Don’t step in puddles with your high-heeled horseshoes: the clack draws all sorts of bad folk. Knock on wooden doors along the way – let them know you are there, once, or twice: unexpected deaths come in threes. Ring every bell – let […]
LOVE GIVES WAY
on the elevator she steps aside, lets others into the gantries first. she hasn’t seen a mirror in years: in the dark, she feels about her shape, is satisfied with being. what was her name? she knew it was a saint’s. it just had to be. in the dark she swallows even without being asked. […]
whose seat, whose table
I. I was the first, one of the first. But you know first one’s a fool. Who’s gonna get in line? First one to go, first one to fight the way. We lived in the throat of death every day. Where you’re criminal because of who you are. “These people ain’t gonna do nothing for […]
The Conjuror’s Closet
“Tomorrow wears yesterday’s face.” – Flavour text from ‘Conjurer’s Closet’, Magic The Gathering Warily the doors creak as I am reaching into the ether again my hands are billowing in the current of adrenaline and shivering like kites caught in trees I am reaching in to bring out magic trickery (n.) the practice of deception […]
Brittle Jade
You bottled message parlor woman. You crackled knuckle. You tremulo. I am divining josses in your will. I am folding you into a boat. I am paying Father to take a short trip. To look elsewhere. Oh, you cloud of jade. You page of filled out crossroad answers. You wreath of drawers. You little wreck […]
dream notes
Last night, I dreamt of an old friend picking up smoking, cigarettes with the look of pencils (because she wanted to be a teacher, you see). I dreamt of people I did not know. Last night, I dreamt, aside from her smoking lead, of a table mired in the middle of nowhere, all of us seated: […]
ugly stage 