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december 24 / anniversary

xenolithicedgesliterary.com · 229 words · saved by 2 readers

I write as part of a Chinese diaspora; as part of an American diaspora from places you think of as "flyover states"; as part of a queer diaspora from places we called (and sometimes still call) home. (2) Where does this piece land within the greater history, body, and/or evolution of your work? I wrote this piece about a year and a half into my first full-time job. I'd written so much in school—poems, plays, theses—and suddenly, just vast plains of nothing, no energy, no emotion, no inspiration. I needed to prove to myself that I could still write, and so I decided to write a poem every day for the last hundred days of 2025. This is one of those poems. (3) How do "xenolithic edges” show up in your piece? There is, oddly, in this piece, an actual xenolith: a whitespace intrusion within the field of text, which mediates between two ideas and experiences that contradict and yet must co-exist. ORIGINALLY FROM SOUTH DAKOTA, ALAN ZHU IS A POET, PLAYWRIGHT, MUSICIAN, AND INCOMING GRADUATE STU

december 24 / anniversary Alan Zhu INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR (1) What diasporas do you write into, and what diasporas do you write to create? I write as part of a Chinese diaspora; as part of an American diaspora from places you think of as "flyover states"; as part of a queer diaspora from places we called (and sometimes still call) home. (2) Where does this piece land within the greater history, body, and/or evolution of your work? I wrote this piece about a year and a half into my first full-time job. I'd written so much in school—poems, plays, theses—and suddenly, just vast plains…

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