The virus vacated us. The campus filled with parents’ cars.

The plush ones I ordered off Amazon, I left them in my room 

fresh and emptied of me, stuffed them into a donation box. 

You loved Squirtle most of all. His thin beaky grin— like yours,

mouthing that blue turtle as our child. You held him, pushed him

off your crotch. The cleanest birth ever, you said. But his shell,

there’s no way you could birth a shell. Then I said my sister was 

sliced out wet from my mother’s guts. But Squirtle could swim, 

he swam between us while you slept. Our pillow, I watched him 

while watching you. Our other children nested on my drawer:

Charmander, flame-tailed lizard; and Bulbasaur, corpse-lily bud. 

I met them years ago, thumbs sticky on my Game Boy, 

pixels instructing me to choose one to explore a new world with. 

I picked Squirtle. Trained him to fight other creatures. Captured

and collected their bodies. Those entire continents of life for me

to catch! Each one with its own theme music… I wandered every-

where, listening. Hear music everywhere. Hear the campus yard

sound the largest brass, timpani. Captured from native land, built 



by collected slaves. Hear my room swell with shepherd flutes 

as if my blackness still sleeps there. Left him. We left them there. 

Midnight. I wake from a dream where you birth a blue snail.

Published February 20, 2022

Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana. He is the author of Nearness (The New Delta Review, 2022) and Please make me pretty, I don't want to die (Princeton University Press, 2022). His poems appear or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, Lana Turner, Lolwe, The New England Review, The Paris Review, A Public Space and elsewhere. He mains Ken in Street Fighter.

Zhang Gong was born in Beijing in 1959. After graduating from the Central Academy of Arts and Design in 1993, he started to develop his distinctive painting style rooted in surrealism and pop culture. Drawing inspiration from a panoply of American and Japanese cartoons, as well as the urban environments of city spaces, Zhang’s work also encompasses animation and photography. He is currently Professor at the Information Department of Art and Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Zhang has exhibited worldwide, including Forms and Effects: Ukiyo-e to Anime, Kresege Foundation Gallery, Rampo College, Mahwah, NJ (2017); Hypallage - The Post-Modern Mode of Chinese Contemporary Art, and FICTION LOVE-Ultra New Vision in Contemporary Art, Singapore Art Museum, MOCA Shanghai, (2006).His animation films have been featured at international festivals such as Cinémathèque Québécoise, Brussels Animation Films Festival, London International Animation Festival, and Without Borders Film Festival in Rome. He has been awarded for his animated short film Trees (2003) at: 3rd Animation Academy Awards, Animation School of Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China (2003); 10th Asian Film and Culture Festival, Lyon, France (2004) and 3rd CTVA Academy Awards, China (2004). Zhang lives and works in Beijing.