Sonnet

By Henry Romain

Relics, letters, photographs, mirrors falling as the latch door slips. What I have
to show for a life, these objects. And an attic that collapsed under what it could
not hold, a life’s weight. Staring at all these artifacts scattered around the floor,
trying to recall why I put them up there in the first place, how I thought I’d feel
about them after time passes. It passed. All these things became mementoes…
I’m so zen I doubt any relation between these things and who I supposedly was
or am. Presence isolates, memories become memories of memories, memories
unreal as future. I’ve lived saving experiences for later, now always a planned
then, then always also now. It’s useful when you’re conscious. Though I cringe
when I look at a sunrise, as if unable to reckon with new information. If I could
prophesy what will be, I’d know why today’s sun mattered. Stare straight at it.
But I can’t separate the hunches from the visions, they just pile up like memories
and old things. Ever since the attic broke, I’ve felt a little too alive, like it’s just
me and all these things I was, waiting for days which have no objects, no names.

Cityside

By Hanna Liang

There is a river running through
a city whose banks are freckled with concrete scales
and every stop sign is a foregone fashion
statement and every neon light screams
OPEN FOR 24 HOURS. It is populated
by fish with no eyelids: schools of sardines
refusing to sleep. Or is it that this
city refuses to forfeit its frantic insomniac
vision to dream?

There is a river running beside
a city whose current is exhaust fumes
and feline purrs penetrate passengers’
breaths like Parkinson patients or
punctured fish out of water. There are
sirens with stitched gills in this river in
heat and in winter– running a race with
no clear winner.

There is a river running up from
this city whose tentacles splay out like
limbs serrated with red yellow green LED
bulbs flickering like deep-sea anglerfish
comb jellies; bioluminescent streamers string
vertically across the horizon like an aerial
runway, as if
fish
can learn to be pilots
and steer their stars towards the sun with red
satin carpets and cassette tapes–
could they?

This is a river running down from
this city whose coral is calcified stone
with glass walls shining like bone and pixels
are seafoam on screens. This is the city

a kaleidoscopic litany
a jellyfish’s amniotic sac, resurfaced
a Mariana Trench in lieu of Atlantis

where sardines are tired of unearthing bronze
relics from Titanics and gold–

This is our city:

a new fetal frenzy
a shrink-wrap-domed entity
a virtual reality

a coral reef which will not sleep.