Backlit by the display window of SEPHORA,
you are looking especially bright & decide  

that Safariing on your phone is more urgent
than minding traffic. Fatigue after a fat day  

of work increases the gorge on your forehead
threefold. That expression, sad and uncountable,  

rises from the dark tank of your pixelated
face like a dying goldfish and when  

a pedestrian sees you, it drools earth-bound
like a bathing suit one size larger on your shy  

body out of a shallow lake. To the left
of you several parking slots away,  

a group of white T-shirts smelled uniformly
of orange bottle Tide sauntering in the direction  

of the Chinese noodle place, that chain store
where noodles are served on paper plates.  

Across the street, a man is picking up
some pink roses — it is dinner time,

time to go home — from the corner deli
under its green canopy printed with its own

advertisement.
Fresh Flower Wholesale Price after 5 7 : 30

The man holds the flowers. The bouquet points
downward like a loud-speaker. Only women  

hold flowers like the babies they feed.
In your most expensive autumn jacket,  

you don’t quite know where you are going.
But things will not dwell in your unmoving  

in this rapidly changing world — this is
how they vindicate everything in the email  

& you viewed it in Outlook this morning
and after lunch. Change, is it? You set

 your feet asunder. A belch — of strawberry
resinoid and cheap dairy butter — comes
to get you first somehow.

Published March 6, 2022

Xinyue Huang is a full-time analyst and part-time writer based in New York City. She earned an undergraduate degree in English Literature with the Creative Writing Track at New York University along with a degree in Economics. Born in Shanghai, China, Xinyue writes poetry and short fictions in both English and Chinese. Xinyue is chosen a semi-finalist in the 2021 Joy Harjo Poetry Contest and runs a Chinese poetry blog.

Michelle Jezierski is an artist born and based in Berlin. She received her graduate and post graduate degrees from Universität der Künste Berlin. In 2005, Jezierski received the NICA-Scholarship and spent a semester at Cooper Union New York. She has studied under Tony Cragg and Valérie Favre. Recently, Jezierski’s work has been exhibited in Dusseldorf at Kunst & Denker Contemporary and in Landshut at Galerie Jahn. You can see more of her work on her website, here.