I like my poems fresh— my phrases picked early in the morning, before the sun ripens my sentences, wilting words in the heat. Lately, I’ve been trying to find a sharper knife. I want something gleaming, infallible. A serrated mind, more severe in its offerings. I like when words burst in their fullness, like summer fruit blushing towards its yield. I’m stewing the adjectives so they surprise you— languorous in their slumber, dawning purple and rich in your mouth. Pickling makes my …

your hot curry breath’s got me in such a tither, ready to inhale and gulp you up—my new oxygen let us tiptoe through our floral saffron lawn float in our pool of chicken vindaloo on garlic naan floaties and even when this crimson spice bath begins to rub us wrong, i’ll peel your flaky rice-grain skin dig in so deep we become embedded in each other and we’ll construct our home with a paneer veneer cover our couches with crisp samosa cushions and sure our roof leaks yogurt sauce from time to …

Strands of hay whirl away from the truck, wafting out, down, and over all things, lifted by the breeze from the rocking motion of the truck on the uneven road, wafting down to lay a golden carpet on the concrete, strand by strand rolling past beneath my wheels, the late fall light slanting through the cloud still in the air. I am encased in a world of gold dust and threads, thinking of all those who’d urge me pull out, speed up, and hurry past the steady truck driver …

I swirled a bottle of guava kombucha touched my ear to the mouth to hear it sing to hear the bubbles tinkle and poke like a million grains of jasmine rice being emptied into a jar, mingled with the sea shells and salt from my tearful breaths bursting from behind brittle ribs hell-bound, burdened from breaking hearts and stereotypes about beautiful women —because Mama says it is good to be brave. Eliana Chow is an American-born Chinese writer and editor from Pennsylvania, currently living …

I’ve drawn curtains over the moon, hatched over stars, fanned out your antlers. You look like a coat rack. Maybe I should have drawn an octopus. So I’m drawing an octopus. Oy, my octopus looks like a parachute. Let’s call it a jellyfish. The barbed stingers on its tentacles are poisonous. I’m adding a second jellyfish to double the dosage. I see lightning between the four of us. It’s what I was going for. This is our play, my reindeer. I’ll join you onstage. We’ll tangle their tentacles. …

In an alternate universe this would be it for me. Poof, that fork in the road, that wholly unknowable life. Tough stuff. I live fantasy lives, star in unwritten screenplays: me as struggling actor, me as barista hottie, me as media sensation turned dynamic media sensation now with a rap career. A different kind of victim of the girlhood- to-hysteria pipeline. But there are always those real choices, those stone setters— the ones that change you and not the daydream. An oxygen mask that …