Cindy Juyoung Ok
I was told not to shake
my foot that way—
the luck leaks out

your restless limbs—
so could you sit
more glassily

and not leave the pillows
upright, another hollow
place to ward away your

fortune. I feared young
dying, hating to
waste, but lately

when I cough or clot blood I
register this potential as
passed, my age

now emblem of having aged:
nothing to be envious of,
nothing to revere.

I survived past fulfilling
other's schemas for decades
and I offer you

the grammar of this chance:
keep your hair
unwashed to hold

its knowledge and
avoid writing
your name, or anyone's,

in red except the dead
or those you wish
to be dead soon.

Nights turn off your
fans, collect
your toenail

clippings, and refuse
hums so you dream
of persimmons and

pigs. And if you have loved
then be early, even
earlier, to the after

death ceremony and
when you kiss
the other grievers

as you listen to
the chants, force your legs
greenly still.
from the book WARD TOWARD / Yale University Press
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Color cover image of Diana Khoi Nguyen's book, Root Fractures
Diana Khoi Nguyen on Alternative Family Histories 

"If the video shows one thing, but you remember that moment very differently, how do you reconcile the two? I think both are true and also not true. In that between space, I wanted to create alternate histories as a way to try to fashion hope amid tension. It is so incredible that we can imagine things that didn’t happen and immerse ourselves in these speculative details. Our brains are the original VR!" 

viaINTERNATIONAL EXAMINER
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Cover image in black and white of Evelyn Reilly's book, Having Broken, Are
What Sparks Poetry:
Evelyn Reilly on "Having Broken, Are"


"I live in New York City and also down a dirt road in the country, and that dual existence is part of the 'reality' of both the title poem and the poem sequences that make up most of this book. I put 'reality' in quotation marks because all poems, I believe, are attempts to channel what Sun RA (who is also an interlocutor in this book) calls the 'impossible possible,' which is both a reality and not. Seeking possible words for impossible possibilities I take as one of poetry’s tasks."
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