by Jas Saunders

​Sometimes when I’m anxious
I’ll write poems on the plateaus
of my palms, blue waves
of ink flowing within their gradients and ridges
When I want to hide those feelings
from the rest of the world like a hermit crab
tucked inside itself, I’ll share
an empty fist, displaying new
and delicate fingernails like bleached white
seashells washed ashore
learning to grow in real time
with the rest of me.

Published in UWA’s Pelican and Peafowl magazines, as well as Perth’s youth magazine Pulch, Jas Saunders is an Honours (Creative Writing) student at UWA, with an undergrad in English Lit and Public Health. Her writing focuses on liminal spaces, nostalgia, or memory, with representation her younger self would have desired.

by Yuan Changming 
for Qi Hong

Taking a walk
around the neighborhood at sunset

Leaves rustle
as if they are crows flapping by

In the twilight sky, the moon
looms-

What if it vanished
into an unknown space
as the clouds exchange
their feelings in a hurry?

Seeing a passer-by come my way,
I derail my body & thoughts alike

What if the planet really comes to a pause
during the pandemic?
What if social distancing becomes
the order of the day forever?
What if the season, in other words, lasts
between rain and snow?

Seeing two teenagers approach,
I jump aside and hop on the curb
like a lousy dancer as they run along

What if the doors of my homeland
remain closed until I am too old
or too weak to move, to see
and kiss my first and last love?

What if my family cannot afford to immigrate
to Mars from this burning
or frozen planet?

What if another huge meteorite
hits earth hard enough?
​
What if what I know
is neither true nor false?

Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & chapbooks (most recently LIMERENCE) besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), Poetry Daily & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1929 others. Yuan both served on the jury and was nominated for Canada's National Magazine (poetry category).