glorious days of the aftermath

after the war is won will even wasteland be left? the plankton

could taste your deal with the rocky

edifice, like limestone draining waves in cyclic erosion, in revolutionary

fervor you smile. the unconscious imperialized have fantasized about

gaining the sequoia and pacific, the basis of a half-thriving, almost-thawing

icy dregs of population. when i look up from your mantle i can

just make out civilizations joking bone marrow epiphanies. the

knighted men once said that the gods laughed when they plunged the river and

molded you, all forefingers and chatter, from red nocturnal clay. your

ozone skin, how bloated, how pale blue like pollution would entangle your bones, hollow like a

quail is our national animal because flight renders us free so when you

see the people's fossil oil toys you will

understand love and its vines slackened with methane-soaked berries like how elephants

wallow in muddy potholes watering city lights but

XXXX factor the knights, as do you, while XXXX infest plankton cartilage and

you multiply our zest for lineage.

Lillian Liu

Lillian Liu is an alumni of the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and is forthcoming in re:imagine literary, the Skipping Stones Magazine, and the Arrowhead Review. She is the founder of The Hyperbolic Review (@thehyperbolicreview).

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Unfinished Exit

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