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