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Why does the swim team whoop like that?
It must be no ordinary swim team. At ten,
my swim team and I had no such understandings
(swim teams shouldn’t), lost in the blank pave
of summer. Neither pain nor gain, swim teams
are just swim teams. I wouldn’t dare grow up
and then I did and joined another swim team.
I began to grudgingly suspect other swim teams
of winning all the races. Coach of the swim team
gave me “Most Improved.” I quit the swim team
despite the swim team. We woke up to race glorious
meters, shivers of willow floating by the swim team,
swim team rushing, in turn, by the world, the jittery lives,
this acquiescence gloaming out over the deep end.
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Fiction
“I was my father’s son. My father was Nai Nai’s least favorite.” A Taiwanese American man, driven from home by a secret, reevaluates his childhood memories of his grandmother.
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