Deng 33

Bundles

By Alex Deng

A fragment isn’t a whole but it becomes. I jumped into the pool and the blue gave back the adjectives I removed from my notebook, the slow soft of them, the sapphire. She said

just put the phone away and listen to the way they sound: what you use to modify me—how the limited acoustics of your palette reduce me to dark blue and magenta. A fragment

is by itself. Then she leaned in, reached into her chest and gave me my own bundle of adjectives, and I said, but that’s not me, I am before it all, and a “-ness” only falters in the water like a bullet.

All surface is, is a part, an of, a whole. What we give, what we take.

Then I emerged from the pool and spat the water out of my mouth. A bundle of affects, of fragments: quick, turquoise, small, an hour before. She pointed at the pool and I became the water.

I became something between the thought and the click of the tongue.

Quartz Skies

By Alex Deng

Blue billboards and hydraulics. Eight hours clocked in, the velocity of streetlights, and an empty fridge filled with sleep—the longest form of sleep. Skin

on payroll, skin in the 5 a.m dark. If a glass pane

was light, if the blue glow was a way out, if it was lengthening toward Yonge Street’s high-rises, if the clouds.

Any work that splits or bridges. Any sentence that's necessary to make a living.

Nicotine and the screen, my coffee, awake under a garage of rain, net unwoven, I can't make this a life. A verb here as a transaction. All work

is late work, the work of ending, the working day extended to the final season, to the quartz sky’s falling rain.

Night, Shift

By Alex Deng

hours at the end of hours, rain, falling

coffee cup, she slides her father’s name in

a duffle and carries it through purple light

of the corner store. humming engines

and the exhausted hum of clocks

beside her bed are overdue phone bills

rent payments, and the night shifts but

but these can wait. ringing of cell

division and vapor passing through

years later, when the pause at the

end of the sentence has been erased

written, erased, written to be erased by

her night begins to shift under the street

lights emitting a moment of blue

static writing. it was six years after

the materiality of last precipitations

she puts her mother’s name into

a suitcase and carries it into the city

glowing with rain. spending nights

waiting, the morning syntax not yet

available, arrived too late, maybe

the hum of concrete walls. the moon

heat, cold light, it was five years when

shifts began, she was six years late

Things Lost in 2 a.m

By Alex Deng

This wind was October, was the smell of cut grass and wet mornings, a backpack heavy with bottles and binders. This wind was how aware I was of my own steps. Paychecks spent on factory resets.

This wind is October, is making my feet drag.

These sentences can tell you what happened, but only what happened: bitter drips, every muscle fiber stretching under tension, withdrawal, meaning pull back. I was uncomfortable with the first person pronoun.

I'm still uncomfortable. The frequency of the streetcar is 7 hertz.

And when the trees are threatening rain, or it is raining, I consider keys and bathrooms, some minor contours in thought, faint outlines of subway lights.

How close can I get to telling you this? I have descriptions of arms, of lights, of chemical formulas. How close, when all I have is this ringing?

This wind will always be October.

A flickering noodle shop sign on the intersection. A group of friends screaming at a bus stop. Pupils dilated. I don't know where to put these hands, too aware of them.

Too aware that this only gets halfway to the point.

I'm left with passing through glass.

Alex Deng is a writer based in Toronto. He has appeared or is forthcoming in Canadian Literature, Ricepaper Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca, Frozen Sea and Periodicities. He is the author of two chapbooks: Fuzzy Trace (solipCYST) and Terminal Velocity (forthcoming 2026 with Anstruther Press). Find him on instagram @allexdeng.