This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms by Joan Kwon Glass (Perugia Press 2024).
Garland-Eating Hungry Ghost 食鬘鬼 摩羅婆叉
How many calories
are there in a flower?
If I tear a chain of marigolds
into tiny pieces, will I
feel full faster?
Now that I’m dead,
do carbs count
less? How do I
decide how much
to eat now
that no one
can see me?
How do I measure
my progress when I weigh
less than an ounce?
How many flowers
equal one brownie
in fat grams?
Where does yellow go
when we have crushed
all of the petals
between our teeth?
Joan Kwon Glass is a Korean diasporic author, winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms, and author of Night Swim, winner of the Diode Book Prize (Diode Editions, 2022), as well as the chapbooks How to Make Pancakes for a Dead Boy (Harbor Editions, 2022) and If Rust Can Grow on the Moon (Milk & Cake Press, 2022). Her poems have been featured in The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Slowdown, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in coastal Connecticut where she is a public school educator, and she teaches poetry at writing centers throughout the country.
Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. She’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.
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