An Autobiography in (maybe) one / .5 parts |
Issue 12
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In the furnace room deep freeze, I grow up practicing alchemy. Transfiguring zongzi into a philosopher’s stone, stashing damp bamboo wraps between the crevasses of creamsicles and turkey pies. Watching Saturday morning cartoons before Chinese School to create an experimental formula of Scooby-Doo, Pokémon, Jackie Chan, and Kim Possible. I drink my elixir at quarter past noon to become more permanently Cantonese—temporarily, and never Monday to Friday. Experimentation often unsuccessful, I dedicate my body to field research. Allowing classmates to practice transmutation—pencil lead into skin, then bone. Inoculated, my body is marked for klondike before the pursuit of north. On week nights, I learn the subdued arts of necromancy until I can animate or kill the contours of my dimples, eyelids, cheeks. I grow up the immortal alteration, a backorder Avon cosmetic section. Hugging frozen sticky rice on the basement floor, wishing to be gold, or whole. Or, narrow.
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Jared Wong lives in the Yukon and within the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. His work has appeared with Horse Egg Literary, Imposter, Bywords, 7Mondays, Filling Station, Livina, Empyrean, and on sticky notes and fogged on the sides of slurpees.
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