If you tell me why you always ring the Hornet hive doorbell / and wait with a spoon thinking it’s a honey hive, thinking / the amber inhabitants will remind you to wipe your feet on the welcome / mat before letting you swallow and scoop honey soup and larvae lava, / I’ll tell you why I stood Swan-Lake-point-toed […]
The Funerary Round
My mother goes first, / turning herself into the clock / that stopped right twice each year, / a metronome of albums, candles, and prose; […]
Invitation
Momo tries. She really does. Wanting to make a good impression on her fiancée’s dad, they specifically took time off work so that she could visit Ying Yue’s dad and get to know him, then invite him to their wedding. […]
Alone Together: Friendship in Virginia Woolf’s Flush
A woman and her dog, living through the words of Virginia Woolf, experience the joys and sorrows of friendship—of a friendship that spans the life of that dog from his puppyhood to his last breath and that leaves its mark upon the woman. […]
Before the Rain
Nature is something that frequently captivates me; I enjoy using photography to capture the beauty I see. This photograph, Before the Rain, was actually a lucky mistake. I had forgotten to adjust the manual settings before taking my photo; the aperture was not large enough and it lacked exposure […]
“Technology Xiao Jie” 2020, digital
As a child, I was always aware of the space I occupied as an Asian female. I lived in a mostly white neighbourhood, so the only thing that I yearned for was to assimilate and be like my Caucasian friends. I cast away my Chinese heritage in hopes that I would be accepted not only by my peers, but by myself […]
Don’t Look Back: The Rose-Coloured Nostalgia of Rouge and Happy Together
Nostalgia is a common theme across the Hong Kong cinematic canon, particularly in the New Wave films created during the transition period between the 1984 signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong. This essay will focus on how nostalgia is configured and located in Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1988) and Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997) […]
Weekend I.
We burn the needle over a lighter Mimi found in her mom’s purse. Then she lies on her pink sheets, facing away from me as I kneel next to her head. With clean hands I tuck a dry bar of soap behind her ear and poise the needle over the dot she drew. […]
My Dad is Jeff Probst
I always knew Dad was handsome. When I was five, I remembered the fluorescent hazy lights of the television flickering before my eyes. I saw people who looked like the kids in my class, and sounded like them. Eing-lish. A language I didn’t quite understand yet […]
Racism, Ableism, Exceptionalism, and Imperialism: Jane Eyre as Antifeminist
In “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress,” Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar quote Richard Chase: “Well, obviously Jane Eyre is a feminist tract, an argument for the betterment of governesses and equal rights for women” (338). This essay will argue that the novel is not at all this straightforward, and by some definitions, can be considered antifeminist. […]
She Doesn’t Look Herself
My grandpa didn’t live past seven / and my grandmother didn’t, either, / so I don’t believe
in that pseudoscience anymore. / “Cells die and are replaced every seven years” / feels a lot like a way / to diminish death. […]
an ode to the world
the girl with the black rimmed glasses and red leather skirt waves at me. it is a ritual done every friday at approximately nine forty-five in the morning when the children have filled their cubby holes and business men with pinstripe suits have been seated […]
Self-Portrait as a Bleaching Cream
I am the apartheid in a tube.
minting money off your reservoir of melanin, blithe bleach like bullets until you slow-bleed brown.
Or quieter – like a virus
infecting Indian society’s opinion until they believe they are hostages of their own skin. […]