All My Multitudes Will Eat You Alive
Editors’ Note: The Commuter is moving to Wednesdays! Diverting flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narratives will now be your mid-week pick-me-up. Recommended Reading is moving to Mondays; other than that, everything else will remain the same.
we dream of something, here
hide my kids. Lady, don't eat me alive. i reek, and i live with myself. all company gym-clothes, sweat stains, the time it takes to scarf an orange peel— no flesh. hairball, creativity-free zone. Who I Am. i am wet like the dead sea. never read Crying in H Mart and never will. Where I Am From. nowhere, at least, nowhere you'd vacation. not even worth the to-recycle- or-not-to-recycle dilemma. as free as whatever you pay me. You see? if i stuffed myself into a time machine, i would return here. my belly bulges like a private jet cockpit. i suffer from the worst jellybeans of anxiety. (vomit, earthworm, grass, toothpaste) i am no fun to squish. no lanternfly wings, only pantsuits and 0 crunchy sound effects. your soles would grow me-sized holes, socks slick with salty, greasy tears.
curse of myself
i.
did you know i know? had dinner with foreign
heads tonight picked leaves from their teeth spilled
century porridge into our laps played along
yanked ghost hair— your hair i knotted strands
about neck until i calloused let my ancestors rob
your ancestors’ shrine commit
grave spiritual sin relearn mother tongue
to curse in mother tongue beat you senseless
with heirloom my fortune cookie said
best adventures
the ones you don’t seek i gift
a grandfather clock to you to the writer of this fortune
to every consumer of panda express to me
to couples feeding each other on depraved lawns
to birds that won’t shut up— we all
look the same anyway
ii.
in this life i am many lives
chess grandmaster mahjong mistress who pushes
walls until dawn lucky snow among infinite
lucky snows
dumbly fractaled i am sweet annie i am
evil kate i am army of square-faced
warlords coming to consume your tap-access
your pipes your concert tickets
your charcuterie board your english
your wife your takeout my multitudes
will blizzard ruin your crop make you so bald
your lungs become bald your children become bald