fettucine all'uovo No94 (the carbonara poem) by Christina Shah

fettuccine all‘uovo No94 (the carbonara poem)

our pasts lay desiccated

tangled pasta nests

in glassine windows

waiting to be saline,

salient, pliable grist

as coal miners we emerge from black dust;

you add the rendered events

rough-cut jowl

and the pecorino romano

of umami’s imperfect memory

and make fat silk threads

- previously published in in Rob McLennan's Tuesday's Poem Series (16 June 2021)

Journey to Xishuangbanna by James X. Wang

Journey to Xishuangbanna

the old country stashes swamps in the far southwest

breezes are claggy, sweetly miasmic

jungle sweat drags out the dawn

sallow orb: flicker on

a cacophony of shrieks and chitters

pedestrians crack peanuts at the roadside

dancing speckles cast in the understory

leafcutter ants on a mission for the holy seven

firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea

fodder for sex, sorcery and seasons

humvees bound for Rangoon steamroll through

black market betel and china white

a propaganda party

they brave the Mekong on braided rafts

while fisher girls leap in and out of catfish form

stalks protrude from the marsh at night

thirty stories tall and turgid

carved-out condos in the purple landscape

iridescent windows, polka-dotted eels

they reel me into the deep

when summer monsoons bathe my skin

devour sinew, then bone

the city submerges its name

returns me to primordium

until time to congeal again

- previously published in Arc (95, Summer 2021)

Stump by Jaeyun Yoo

Stump

branches with inflamed apples

sag over the backyard fence

I leave a metal pail beside your shoes

one week later still

a folded ladder

buried in red rot

I sift through the tree for answers

aphids, fire ants, no fruit

I bite midway into a kiss

your slug of tongue

the parting scarcely saved

by a thin spit trail

this for three more years

until a bear discovers our unkempt garden

mauls our flea-bitten dog

the city forces us to chop down the tree

we pass the hatchet back and forth

- previously published in Grain (47.3, Spring 2020)