Two Poems by Quinn Lui

alternate fifth colours of the rainbow

i wear the name you give me for / three years before it thins out threadbare / which is to say for three years    /    i let you call me a moonshard   /   a toxin-bright bloom   /   forktongued and lovely / poison-flowering snakeplant / jade slipped cold into a colourless throat / lined by ghosts with ink-stamped faces / smiling tight-lipped to hide the teeth / call me sovereign of little sorrows / time-lapse of ungrowth / call me anything / but a treasure again / i stole the jadestone from my name and / sold it for gold / melted it down into rivers / and like the drip of mountaintop snow / one day it will all be swallowed / by the ocean / all of its mouths opening and closing fishlike / around their own once-names / forgotten — 


ghost-town girl

bright                   in the way of cerussite: too soft
to be metal-touched. all flash 
& glimmer, saying goodbye
               once every year you’ve known her, 
the routine of the runaway act
                                 something safer to measure by
than a nebulous new year. don’t worry   
                                               what my hands will do.
in every story i’m the only one 
who winds up                  with an open throat.

one time a girl with signal-fire hair 
knelt over me on slick-glowing floor,
laced me back up 
                                 & promised to do it again 
long as i needed it. & next time 
her back was turned                     i asked someone
               to burn down the building.

                                             this is the damnation 
               of the rabbit-heart. i don’t know 
if those ever want anything more than to see 
the warmth of home                       last beyond 
your own meaning, to live 
                                             a little longer, to not 
freeze in the field        as the shadow of death  
falls from above. it’s not 
               that i think i had wings in the womb, 
or that they snapped off          at the first touch        
of this world’s air
                               but i should’ve come out something 
                                              that makes its home high 
instead of tied landbound, left 
lovesick for flight. 

don’t you dare give me to the ground. i’ll come back 
                just to tell you    
                                              you’ll never be forgiven.


Quinn Lui is a Chinese-Canadian student who has been described as 1) mostly made up of caffeine and bees and 2) dedicated to being a menace. Their work has appeared in Occulum, Synaesthesia Magazine, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere, and they are the author of the micro-chapbook teething season for new skin (L’Éphémère Review, 2018). You can find them @flowercryptid on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, or sharing a fire escape with raccoons.