Sean Wang
Sean Wang (he/him) is based in the tropical island of Singapore. His poetry and essays have been published in Rattle, Capsule Stories, Filler Zine, Dismantle, Art&Market and more. He edits for Outlander Zine and Ginger Bug Press. He is interested in the articulation of suffering and the mythologization of the personal. On Friday nights he watches movies about doomed romances. Saturday nights are for teenage nostalgia.
Drowning Goldfish
Keep surfacing in my dreams,blood bubbles in a marmite swamp,pit tar of my cavity;
a shaman eye hovering over rotted entrails,clumps of hair fall off the ceremonial dagger.My bloody beak cuts the pale liver, a bloated moon.
I prune weeds in midnight dark,pineapple flesh palms filling with quills.The kettle screams in pain, poppy-red,tea leaves rattling like teeth, terrapinscrashing down the sink. A forest felled.Bones snap like logs, ash white cracksof a palm. A crumple of shapesrunning out of the tent in their Venetian masks and furs.Harlots! The tinkling of bells mean the train is coming. Its passengers mute and forgotten. Carriages flake like pearlsclattering onto hardwood floor,a meteor shower, summer rain.A crash of thunder! A window panesplit open like a melon, served in the mouth of a pigstill smoking from its eyes,wisps trailing into the sky like spider silkloosely calling for prey.Ventriloquist wire holds these fleshy balloons—drowning goldfish
keep surfacing in my dreams,a furnace whistles in the dead char of winter;a coconut falls and splits its milk over rock.
a shaman eye hovering over rotted entrails,clumps of hair fall off the ceremonial dagger.My bloody beak cuts the pale liver, a bloated moon.
I prune weeds in midnight dark,pineapple flesh palms filling with quills.The kettle screams in pain, poppy-red,tea leaves rattling like teeth, terrapinscrashing down the sink. A forest felled.Bones snap like logs, ash white cracksof a palm. A crumple of shapesrunning out of the tent in their Venetian masks and furs.Harlots! The tinkling of bells mean the train is coming. Its passengers mute and forgotten. Carriages flake like pearlsclattering onto hardwood floor,a meteor shower, summer rain.A crash of thunder! A window panesplit open like a melon, served in the mouth of a pigstill smoking from its eyes,wisps trailing into the sky like spider silkloosely calling for prey.Ventriloquist wire holds these fleshy balloons—drowning goldfish
keep surfacing in my dreams,a furnace whistles in the dead char of winter;a coconut falls and splits its milk over rock.
At the break of dawn
birdsong, and this feeling of leaving—a fat bubble, like a flea welling through my threaded capillarieslike I’ve been holding my breath for six yearsin a murky tub, frothingas snow does when it’s pushed to the side of the road.
A call: empty and ringing like bells,the dark finger of a strangertapping on my windows as I slept,the scurried footsteps of raindashing into pavements. A habit,no, more innate— a soulflayed and pinned into the sky like a zodiacmounted on navy velvet, the gemof an entomologist, beady-eyed and bentlike a crow-sickle scratching through glass, a tear carving its path in a block of salt.
How were we really? I wouldn’t know.I was always holding the knife through my palm,my fleshy tongue split like the sponge of an anemone crumbling in brackish water.Our cross-stitched limbs velcro-hooked.Yes, guilty as chargedlike a lone balloon in a field of lightningprickling down your nape,a trail of ants down your navel.You lathered me in clay, and I set on myselflike a terrible kiln, a heaving belly of rocks.
Somewhere insidethe cracks in a pot branch outand bloom. Petals of a vase tinkle as they fall.The furnace billows through the night like a scream.
A call: empty and ringing like bells,the dark finger of a strangertapping on my windows as I slept,the scurried footsteps of raindashing into pavements. A habit,no, more innate— a soulflayed and pinned into the sky like a zodiacmounted on navy velvet, the gemof an entomologist, beady-eyed and bentlike a crow-sickle scratching through glass, a tear carving its path in a block of salt.
How were we really? I wouldn’t know.I was always holding the knife through my palm,my fleshy tongue split like the sponge of an anemone crumbling in brackish water.Our cross-stitched limbs velcro-hooked.Yes, guilty as chargedlike a lone balloon in a field of lightningprickling down your nape,a trail of ants down your navel.You lathered me in clay, and I set on myselflike a terrible kiln, a heaving belly of rocks.
Somewhere insidethe cracks in a pot branch outand bloom. Petals of a vase tinkle as they fall.The furnace billows through the night like a scream.
Aubade
Early in the morning the window is hesitant.Sunlight forms a thin skin softly giving the room a warm capillary blush.My drowsy eye clicks open to meet the daybabbling and squealing in mynah calls. Geckoes in the corner scurry into disappearing shadows.A morning glory purses its lips, and opensto spools of light.A new day rising;The spit in my mouth is sour,My breath reeks of death.
summoning adolescence
let the wind thread through you like a needle.take a breath of neon, the green of exit signs. a palm fire-red, flame trickling down your forearm like a group of dazed slugs. warm and sticky, a cup of toffee pours itself out of your knee. dust-sprites whirl and kiss your browning legs, rusting like a cracking leaf. next to you, your bike lies in the grass, a dented body. a dull throbbing calls to you from the ether. demons grip you and shake off all your teeth, clattering off like dandelion seeds. hair worms through your body and pulls itself into tumbleweeds. blood magic: you blush so easily. it rushes everywhere but your head. twigs line the floor like molted fangs, the world gapes and swallows you, tiny peach pill.
and you realize you are on fire in the middle of the roadlit by the sun heaving itself into tar.
and you realize you are on fire in the middle of the roadlit by the sun heaving itself into tar.
