The Burning River

by Hal Y. Zhang in Uncanny Magazine Issue Forty-Three | 114 Words

word for word pound for pound your name is the heaviest

of your foibles.

that the heart fails is no surprise, each thing has its end;

that you chose to fail mine is.

then to steal a dead woman’s self, you should be afraid

of the haunting but

we are all our choices, crags rounded by the water of time,

and I choose not to spend

purgatory hating you, but I can’t say the same for my gangrenous

tongue in your mouth wagging.

Hal Y. Zhang

Hal Y. Zhang writes science, fiction, and science fiction, in no particular order. Her language-and-loss poetry chapbook AMNESIA (Newfound) won the Eric Hoffer Micro Press Award, and her women-with-sharp-things collection Goddess Bandit of the Thousand Arms was published by Aqueduct Press.