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“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet…”
With these haunting words, Celeste Ng begins her spellbinding 2014 debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, a psychological yet gorgeously literary thriller centered on a Chinese-American family living in 1970s Ohio. While Lydia’s death ostensibly forms the crux of the novel, the fragmented pieces of life she leaves behind constitute the true story.
The book is a meditation on the interactions between family and society that culminates in
This air is the air of an oven,
it is so deathly hot.
For days the sun has been crisping the microbes.
A boy has disappeared from the village.
2AM and the foothills of the Pyrénées
lit with light flashes between the dark spaces of trees,
foliage on foliage.
Sparks of light glitter the mountain sides.
Up here- mountains before us, village below us-
it’s like an ant farm, lines of lights
following the twists and turns between
row after row of houses
scaling slowly into the mountains
for the third consecutive night.
II.
The day it happened,
we’d walked into the foothills,
I said “Okay.”
Because I found her lipstick here
The other day,
What I don’t understand, however,
Is why you thought I wouldn’t notice
Her shadows on the sheets
After you had been together,
Playing with it… consequences are dire.
So when we first spoke and my gaze was magnetic,
I warned you of the danger, but you told me to “forget it.”
When lips touched, Niagara’s falls heightened up speed,
The waves crashed faster, so I just took the lead.
Emotions were high. Might as well call it weed,
DNA spilled profusely. You chose to let it bleed.
Me? I’m no angel. I’m guilty as charged,
Convicted of attraction. Eternally at large.
The judge should throw the book at my seductive soul,
Probation wouldn’t work. Control is my goal.
The NY Literary Magazine is now accepting poetry submissions for our free to enter “Deep poems about life” competition!
We invite talented poets of any age and nationality to send us their meaningful life and death poems.
We’re seeking beautifully composed verses which portray deep emotions and bring across vivid feelings.
We’re accepting dark poems about life and living; cheerful, positive life poems; thought-provoking, philosophical poetry about the meaning of life;
The NY Literary Magazine invites international fiction writers to submit their flash fiction stories to our Best Short Fiction Story of 2017 contest.
It is FREE to join our short story contest! Each writer may submit up to 3 fiction stories.
We accept all genres of short fiction stories and welcome writers of any age and nationality.
Promised forever and a day.
Sad eyes reflecting, two times two,
Somehow hands held slipped away,
And love moved another way.
Starlight on waves that swayed,
Misty cloud dreams from the first of days.
Thus glowing comet trails pulsed as if to say:
“Free verse for a free nation!” ScreeningRoom.org, in cahoots with the Waterfront Barge Museum in Red hook, invite you to a public reading of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from Leaves of Grass.
Dozens of artists, poets, writers and vagabonds will read individual cantos as “a tonic against gobshites and a gilded age” – Thomas Lynch.
Join us to support the Waterfront Barge Museum, the ACLU, PEN America, the NEA and Sunny’s Bar, with a night of poetry, the sunset over the Brooklyn waterfront and
Heart of none, exhausted blank
Deaden to hopes, black holes gnashing pit
Love lays slaughtered amongst sanity’s skin
Truth bare, broken hearted growls.
Tree of life bends now tree of death,
Will for one, all for naught.
When will arid soul give way to soaring rains?
Announcing the poets who won the Erotic Poetry Contest we hosted on Writer's Cafe!
