The Worm

by Huan He

Wrangling the worm from its love nest, I feel its

marshmellow-y state, which was not quite hard.

Or soft, but I cannot think of the science word

for it. Viscous. Vicious? Between a solid and a

liquid, which is the state of most things worth

holding and keeping, like a memory melting on

black concrete. To be made of goo, like a worm

that keeps moving toward another sun, grooving.

Not me, I could never dance. I could never do

the cupid shuffle in the cafeteria dance floor

in the sticky, icky spring Friday. Watching the

horsefly land on the hall clock. Stephen dared me

to kiss a boy, and instead of his lips, all I could see

was his ear. Could he hear me, the sound of my

humble belly mixing red punch and metal, pining,

making my mouth stretch in strange ways.

His tongue, wriggling, as if it had eyes of its own.

Huan He is the author of Sandman (2022), which won the 2021 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. His poetry explores race, sexuality, and belonging from the perspective of a queer Chinese American raised by the prairies. His poems appear/are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, A Public Space, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. In Fall 2023, he will start as an Assistant Professor of English (Asian American Literature) at Vanderbilt University.