The Unspeakable Cruelty of the Left Hand

Two poems by Zen Ren

The Unspeakable Cruelty of the Left Hand

Visual Noise

Click to enlarge

Recollection

Finding your scarf, I recalled [telling you twenty percent
of people die of cancer. Amazed, you asked

what percent of people die—like you
could only measure sorrow (within the width

of its loom. When I first met you I knew I must begin
to practice for grief, its unspooled margins. My scarf

always ended too soon to warm both our necks,
so I asked you) to hold on to it. Filled with fire

these days, in the legacy of remembered things, would you
consume the living with your lack of needing?

What I am] asking is really a favor. What I am
asking you is: would you still like to keep it, where

you are, or all the scarves now good enough?

More Like This

Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Spawning Season” by Joseph Osmundson

Trumpet vines twist around a wild salmon and grayscale sketch in a collage that evokes parenthood and ecology, loss and relief

Dec 11 - Electric Literature

11 Books About Disability as an Ethics of Care

In these novels, essays, and poems, disability is a form of knowledge that can reshape an inaccessible world

Dec 9 - Jodi-Ann Burey

A Severed Finger Is Rarely a Good Sign

“Fissures,” flash fiction by Ariel Katz

Dec 3 - Ariel Katz
Thank You!