Issue 4.2
Summer 2024
Yuna Kang
Intersection at 10th and 11th Street
​
I crunched over pink glass today:
rose petals frosted over the ground, stuck to our pavement like the
stickers-on-oranges you get from the Chinese grocer, it was auspicious
today, and yesterday, the sun narrows her view from fog-lifting
clouds. Like puffs from a Dragon, palaces of sky move above us,
huge landscapes of rain, threatening to pour down. The Lunar New Year began
with a handful of firecrackers that stained the florist’s storefront pink, and then
gentlemen in work suits bought roses by the dozen, laying gold glitter to rest all over
our gutters. The sky withholds her blessings in apprehension, afraid to kiss
our littered ground.
Yuna Kang is a queer, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She has been published in journals such as Strange Horizons, Sinister Wisdom, and more. They were also nominated for the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award. Their website link is: https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/website
Yuna's Book Recommendations
Mooncrumbs by Sheila Dong
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
My Baby First Birthday by Jenny Zhang.
Reflection
Oakland for me is a site of continual awe and sadness. I do not think I will ever be able to reconcile how this city is able to be such a font of joy and beauty and pain, all at once, its truth a shocking multiplicity. The poem I’ve written here is part of a handful of pieces drawn on specific locations in Oakland. I was inspired by seeing the aftermath of Lunar New Year celebrations in historic Chinatown, all the beauty, all the reckless mess.