issue 3
june 25, 2019
by Catalina Ouyang
one does not know it, one does not desire it, 2018
detail view
plaster, steel, alabaster, wood, cement, Celluclay, acrylic paint, enamel paint, artist’s shoes, dried lotus root, binder rings, oil drums, soapstone, bitter melon, nail, serving dishes, fluorescent lights, extension cord
editors’ note
Happy Pride Month, you guzzlers of gumdrops! You wacky whales! You shimmering sharks! The summer is here and so are WE, your Underblong editors, Sam & Chen, back with Issue 3! A whole universe of feelings has been felt since we last released such incredible poems. We were starting to worry—are we too overwhelmed, too exhausted to keep this going? But we can. We must. We (finally) are!!
Since Issue 2, we gained three incredibly beautiful readers (one of whom wrote a stunning poem that we accepted for this issue before hiring!!), we lost our host site, Tumblr, to Christianity, and we have both personally had a mountain of Life Things smack us upside the face. We know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from us. And we are so happy to be back, so happy to be here with a bigger, stronger team (yay blongteam!), and so happy to re-cultivate this little patch of the literary interwebz.
And what a gorgeous issue to return with! What a queer issue. Full of kisses and Ikea, pugs and vampires. Also, dismantlings of the heteronormative. Also, dreams of a more livable future and now. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the sheer blonginess, at how well people understand the tones and textures of this space. There are lines in this issue’s poems that feel like better descriptions/definitions of Underblong than anything we’ve come up with.
For example, what Lily Someson says in a poem equal parts list and magique—“silky centered, / witchy pisces, soft feeling.” Or how one of Ariel Chu’s speakers describes herself: “I am very smart! / I am verge-of-greatness! / I am knife that slices! / I am edge itself!” Or this moment of perfectly punctuated dialogue in one of Noor Hindi’s poems: “And I say . . . but what about death?? / And she says . . . but the patriarchy . . .?!” Yes.
We have been singing lines from all these brilliant poets to each other, across the country, late night calls. We have Facetimed and waved and yelled and wowzerella wowza. We have hung up, then continued the conversation over text. And we have been working on a shiny new website! (Which will make formatting and releasing new issues much easier. Which means new issues sooner!!) It’s taken some time, but now we are here, we are live. Alive with these lines we are just bursting to share. With you~
You peach blossoms. You tweeters extraordinaire. You writers and readers mhm. Please help us in welcoming—and do make some noise—Issue 3.
Love,
Sam & Chen
P.S. Thanks again to Jeff Gilbert for helping us with the audio files <3!
poems
Lily Someson - “dyke sonnet made of dating app bios”
Anna Stockdale - “An IKEA Life”
Fargo Tbakhi - “there is a pinky finger in my mouth”
Ariel Chu - “Killing Jenny with My Fungus Hands” and “Jenny, Choking on Her Family Tree”
Megan Simpson - “I won’t trust the post office”
Doug Paul Case - “Landscape with Constipated Pug”
Emma William-Margaret Rebholz - “I don’t know god’s pronouns”
Jess Feldman - “Over It”
Carla Sofia Ferreira - “In This Poem, Bert & Ernie Are Gay”
Sophia Holtz - “Period Piece” and “cocoon”
Stephanie Bryant Anderson and Andrea Spofford - “You Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking a Few Eggs”
Inam Kang - “ode to the rimjob”
Giovanna Zavala - “Performance art except"
interview
with Jane Wong (by Mag Gabbert)
Catalina Ouyang is a visual artist and child of the Chinese diaspora by way of St. Louis, New Jersey, and a cul-de-sac outside of Chicago. Her non-disciplinary practice spans sculpture, text, installation, performance, video, and participatory projects, among other modalities, exploring the interstices of myth, desire, subjugation, and monstrosity. Ouyang has had solo exhibitions at Rubber Factory (New York, NY), Selena Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Make Room (Los Angeles, CA), Trestle Projects (Brooklyn, NY), the Millitzer Gallery (St. Louis, MO), and fort gondo compound for the arts (St. Louis, MO). Her work has been included in group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Italy, Germany, Mexico, and China. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.