Jennifer Huang, a writer and teacher, earned an undergraduate degree in creative writing and visual arts from Carnegie Mellon University and is an MFA student in poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Photography by Abigail Bereola.

Nonconcordant

by Jennifer Huang

When you ask to watch hentai
together, your fingers
already typing, I can’t stop myself
from not-speaking and then from not-
watching the screen held by a hand
that just an hour ago held mine
across a table before our food arrived,
and that now sweats as we watch
what I did not want
and hear what I think
is pleasure ringing, and I wonder
what exactly led us to this moment,
when only three hours ago I told
you a secret, and you cradled
me in silence after my insides swelled
from a biopsy, until
some sound brings me back to me
watching us watching it and feeling
a wave I don’t or can’t understand—
and then my voice asking for it
to end, surprising even me.


Read on . . .

“The Food Chain,” poems by Raven Leilani