Explore

Welcome to my bed. I have these two beers, do you want them?

Exhausted, androgynous, delirious, I delight in my many parts.

The pupils are toothpicks. The lake is a sky with a circle beneath.

The stars begin to turn clockwise, freeing us of all consequences.

Elsewhere, perhaps here too, regimes stagger, a congress ends.

It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.

After almonds after anchovies. After baguettes, a plate of cheese.

Some night soon you’ll haul yourself out from far beneath this life.

The mechanism and its crank pull us forever closer, you and I.

Imagine octopus, and keep the talk going through the chew.

Her biggest secret was Jay Currie—her white American boyfriend.

You don’t know what it’s like to be so hungry that you’d steal to eat.

Here, Min Jin reads from her novel at Narrative Night, New York City.

At 35,000 feet, the center of heaven, in the deep Milky Way, we meet.

I think there was a center about which I never even thought to ask.

My childhood is a city where tenderness was frowned upon.

Walking on Canal Street, I slipped on the curb and fell on my face.

You came to me in a hanbok dream, fluttering as it flew in.

Pummel nests from limbs and drown the furred things in their dens.

I peel back the hours and search for the light before it scatters.

He was caught. Of course he was caught. He was always caught.

What is greater: the distance between these bodies, or their need?

Rays burst from behind the mountain, sweep the broad beach.

Any white man without a servant was presumed to be in need of help.

Our hopes swirled around the act of swallowing a teaspoon of yogurt.

The wok oil ready to tremble and smoke—everything, ready.

Let the squeamish suffer their fear, let them live without really living.

It had always been this way. Mothering, for my mother, was a cameo role.

They’re not, and it’s not, and we’re not, and only a god can save us.

Everyone roared at her wit. Ravenous children prowled like tigers.