WHEN AUTUMN CARRIES HER NAME

At this very moment, you’re in the city, where traffic bustles all around. You wander through the book street, a little lost, stopping now and then to chat aimlessly with a young university student who, just seconds earlier, was staring out the window, perhaps counting raindrops or lost in thoughts that weighed on her heart. It’s autumn in Saigon, though you can’t tell where summer ends or winter begins. All you feel is a mess of emotions, a flood of memories, longing, and affection threading through every bone, aching like winter cold.

To you, she was all four seasons. But you liked to call her Pandora, yours alone. She was Saigon’s rainy and sunny days, tender green, the scent of lotus. She could be Saigon’s fall, Hue’s winter, Dalat’s pine forest, or a foreign ocean shore, you never tried to pinpoint her. All you needed to know was that somewhere, you lived in her heart, and she always reigned in the left chamber of yours. She was a realm of your thoughts, a blooming golden lily, a small alley, and Saigon in autumn.

You closed your eyes, and you were somewhere inside a fairytale garden. Dewdrops sparkled purple and crimson on the grass, reflecting the sunlight filtering through the sky. You wandered around the garden, the sunflowers drooped while the last asters stretched upward, clinging to bloom.

“You’re late,” her voice was soft and warm, like a breath of autumn, like a leaf fluttering gently. Music drifted through the chill air. She was right there, beside you, yet loneliness still lingered in the wide-open space.

She whispered something about music you didn’t fully grasp, but you listened anyway, drawn to the fragrance in her gentle voice. She spoke of rock and pop tinged with wistful chimes, of bittersweet ballads strummed by a distant guitar, of unrequited love, of death beneath decaying trees, and of mournful melodies. The leaves turned golden, and the morning air was brisk and clear. You watched her, so vibrant in a pastoral scene full of allure. Through her voice, music became innocent and luminous. Somewhere, a violin solo began to rise, just a bit more skilful, a bit more joyful and the crisp late-autumn air pulled you deeper into her presence. Her voice, its softness and seduction, merged with the crackle of leaves underfoot. At times, her eyes lit up with a radiant smile.

She wore pale brown boots, a grey knit sweater, a delicate scarf, and a silky A-line skirt. Around her fair wrist, a glittering bracelet fastened with Pandora’s iconic clasp and sparkling stones. In a tender moment, she removed it, handing you a single silver Pandora Moments charm, an emerald star. They said nothing more. Just listened to music playing softly from her tiny phone. You were overwhelmed by a serene intimacy, a sweet romance. The sound was like a soul-deep embrace, one you never wanted to end. You felt a deep, almost aching familiarity, as if nothing in life could surpass this. Listening to heartfelt music, sitting beside a graceful, intelligent woman, you knew then that this was the one you wanted to spend your life with.

When the song ended, all you wanted was to tell her how much you wanted her, needed her, loved her. You wanted to open your arms, pull her close, and place a warm, earnest, and pure kiss on her lips, a kiss of that perfect morning, of youth. Some melodies seem powerful enough to change everything. And yet, you couldn’t move. You just stood there, frozen, until her footsteps faded and only the light rustle of falling leaves remained in the air.

Back in the city, you couldn’t forgive your own hesitation. A block of ice had formed in the middle of that floating autumn. The discomfort lingered for weeks, then months. Every time you woke up, every afternoon after work, every night before sleep, she was there. Her image filled Saigon’s streets, radiant, clear, confident. Autumn passed. Winter came. Seasons changed. Encounters came and went, but your fear never left. You feared shattering the fragile autumn clouds, feared a gust of wind blowing in the wrong direction, feared her scarf wrinkling when the music hit its climax.

You saw her again and again, in that garden, on crowded streets. Each time, you wanted to say something, but the words collapsed inside, your limbs trembled like you had a fever. Each afternoon after work, you wandered aimlessly, mind blank, staring at your coffee cup and a bare wall, ignoring every phone call, never logging into Facebook.

Until one day at the end of August, what strange force gave you the courage to finally hold a girl’s hand, to kiss her cheek softly, scented with purple flowers? That girl, with fair wrists, a gleaming silver bracelet, high heels, and a floral dress. And at that moment, a familiar tune echoed, a gentle fragrance lingered. You were overwhelmed; your heart throbbed as if struck by a sudden storm.

She stood there, watching you and the girl, or maybe lost in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The horizon opened before you in shades, but what lingered deepest was the brown of fallen leaves and the gray of her knitted sweater. The scene was pristine, canopied in green, sky scattered with clouds. It deepened your view of things. And now, every time you return to the city, you ask yourself: Who am I in this life? Why does the Pandora charm in your left coat pocket still glow with warmth? And when will you ever forget her, especially when autumn returns to Saigon?

Võ Thị Như Mai is a Vietnamese-Australian poet, translator, and cultural contributor currently living in Western Australia. Her writing explores themes of memory, identity, diaspora, and the quiet power of everyday life. With a deep love for both Vietnamese and English literature, she often bridges the two through translation and creative expression. Như Mai’s poems have been featured in various literary platforms, and she actively participates in international poetry and cultural exchange events. Her work is marked by sensitivity, lyrical grace, and a strong connection to her cultural roots. Her work was featured in BRUSHSTROKE WA 2023 and in recognition of her contributions to cultural and literary exchange, she was recently honoured by the Consulate General of Vietnam in Australia for promoting Vietnamese literature and arts abroad

The birthday that even time forgot

What is this subterfuge, this deceit,

this falsehood? Is it the meat defrosting 

on the countertop or a clap of thunder

on a stormy night?

My mother reaches out for a Gemini, 

a sister
(and  not the Greek, not the Stoic,

not the philosopher, not the poet)

gripped by the clay hands of Europe

My mother turns (albeit clandestine) into a 

statue in her bed

(my mother and father sleep in separate beds)

While I am masked by discontent

I give but there is no one to receive my love

Except the broodvraers and the children,

the pale niece and academically gifted nephew

I reach for the sun and wait for it to 

burn me up

                  Birthday, you are nothing

but a worm, a stubborn ventricle. The years,

they pass me by solemnly. My mother 

comes with breakthroughs, intent and 

intelligence, the frailties of life that I

inherited from her, cosmic dust under 

her feet, and so she comes

to life. Without acknowledging me, she 

floats into the bathroom to do her ablutions,

and put her mascara on. There is no food 

in the house

There is no mother-love. There is no 

birthday cake, no jubilation. There is 

only sadness. Sadness and oranges in a basket 

in the sitting room that I am not allowed

 to touch because it is for show. My sister, 

oh, well, does not wish me.

She does not say the words I long  to hear,

the words that will make me forgive her 

long silences. Happy  Birthday. She has no reason 

to speak to me and then, just then, a rhizoid

forms in my heart. This rhizoid is made of

dark matter. 

The same matter the universe is made

of (dark matter). The church grows in 

my spirit man, at the seat of Gary 

Zukav’s soul, and while I turn into a 

silhouette 

of the past, I think of my childhood, and my inner

child waving goodbye to me. I think of 

Goethe, Rilke, Thomas Mann. I think 

of the Freedom Fighters in Gaza, I think

of the brain rot of my clinical depression 

 and regain 

my strength, and the language of breath 

is slowly returned to me.

Free entry only to queer parties

The night hides your face like you’re a thief

You steal my hugs and kisses all night

You’re horny and we don’t limit ourselves to jerking each other off

Your marble eyes close

You fall asleep on the snow-white sheet of my chest

A couple of days later you leave for another city to join your wife and children

You save to buy them all gifts

I’m forced to save my feelings again

Free entry only to queer parties  

***

We fucked loudly all night while nuclear power plants mushroomed

We swallowed sperm so greedily that it started to rain and the air bombs got wet

We kissed so passionately that flowers began to grow outside the cemetery

We jerked off for so long that during this time the neighbor’s children grew up

Basements are dark, so it’s easier to have sex there

But it’s too early for children to have sex, so they just sit silently in bomb shelters

The gun’s erection bursts out of screaming throats

Severed heads continue to give blowjobs

Trigger of cardiac atavism

Something exploded in a bright jet and splashed the walls of the bomb shelter:

Gun or strap-on?

Blood or sperm?

***

cover man

stubble on the face

press on the stomach

in strong hands he holds a sword

there is a dragon tattooed on his hand that is about to devour me

in my childhood, models from glossy magazines looked a little stereotypical, but even then they seemed sexy to me in a sense

the dragon swallowed me

no sword will cut my pupils now

all the people around me look stereotypically like the same man from the cover of a magazine

did everyone really look at gloss in childhood?

Is it really true that everyone in adulthood loves stubble and six-pack abs?

I’m walking along an empty subway car

the wind of the underground blows traces of the past

the heat of the dungeon melts the flesh of the future

I’m nowhere and I don’t have stubble or abs

I’m nobody by the standards of glossy magazines

no one needs my body, not even myself

my body doesn’t even want to fuck because in reality fucking is not as glossy as in porn films

It’s surprising that glossy magazines are still quite popular

a cute boy with a beautiful butt is going down the escalator

his eyes are lowered to the phone screen

the heat and wind of time are blowing up our sandy footprints that never existed

***

I want you to tear my ass with your dick but you are no longer there

Your body is locked with the key of the night

My dick is forever locked in a chastity belt

Nobody knows what it means to die from love for a dead person

Everyone knows what death is, love and the dead

However time attaches no importance to anything and drowns everything in its water

I would like to drown in sperm and not in the water of lonely days

I wish atomic bombs wouldn’t grow instead of mushrooms

I want to drink your cum in the secret compartment of a nuclear power plant

Your grave is flooded after a hydroelectric explosion

Your body is shot through by a senseless war

(Another war that looks like dust dye)

You always loved flowers and didn’t like khaki

Plastic flowers are now with you forever

I’m now forever alone with time

I dream of being killed by a bomb and after that no one ever dies anywhere

I’m drowning in the water of a blown up hydroelectric station and I’m drowning in the lonely time that you gave me

Death is your first gift to me

(You were deliberately cold towards me because you knew about my love feelings)

This is your last gift

Death lights up on the horizon like a box with an unknown surprise

Instead of a strap-on there are still rifles

Instead of me people who thirst for life still die

But I’m not comfortable and I feel stolen at birth

Who and why brought me to the world of water and sand

Sand castles still await the tide

I’m always late (for dates and cemeteries)

I can not swim

Arrival Before the Rose Dream Ends  (previously published by Wild Court）

He says he’ll arrive in Portland tomorrow.
It’s his turn to pay —
In the silence before the restaurant opens,
he arrives early.

A self-serve hot pot,
steam rising to fend off winter.
The union of dead volcanoes and roses,
perfect in his mind —
a scene from an Italian art film,
woven into the hum of lobby music.

A couple pick their ingredients.
A spoon stirs the sauce,
like jam stirred by love.

As dusk settles,
the girl arrives
and whispers something behind him.
He answers, “It’s nothing.”
He pays the bill this time and next time.

Months later, in a dream,
the dead volcano erupts,
swallowing the roses,
swallowing his life.

The next morning,
the news reports —
a young man in a Portland apartment,
kissed by death.

He lies on a bed of roses,
silent as a dead volcano.

Confessions of Death（Previously published in Apocalypse Confidential）

I am a wealthy writer
from a noble Kyoto family.
In Japan, my fans call me: Swan.

I remember when pale moonlight
illuminates the ashen stone.
A woman drapes herself in a white kimono,
adorned with strutting cranes
and blooming pink sakura,
gazing deeply at my figure.

She is my wife, an elegant swan too,
who carries the spirit of Bushido.

I do not long to embrace death;
I only wish to spread my wings
and self-destruct beautifully,
for redemption.

My consciousness submerges
in the weight of original sin,
rolling alone.

My family owns a villa during wartime,
where cherry blossoms bloom in abundance.
How shameful this is
to the impoverished.
Only death offers peace.

I want to cast my weightless body
into the surging ocean together with her.
I say, “As a mortal, I am so sorry.
I do not deserve to be happy.”

Two swans step into the water,
forsaking this ridiculous family.
In the moment of fading,
death is liberation.

A moment of silence,
my heart at peace,
with oceanic waves.

Within this vast wheel of destiny,
I surrender to the hush of infinity.

We long for peace,
and in the crushing of the great wheel,
only the moment of suffocation
beneath the water
brings forth
a profound and joyful illusion:

The setting sun,
spring snow,
floating chrysanthemums
in my first chapter of life.

We die for the suffering,
but for whom do the living live?
We destroy ourselves for our own expectations,
but who remembers the dead?

At last, we smile at death,
at nothingness.
Death becomes our final sanctuary,
a respite from a world
reeking of greed.

Like two delicate leaves,
we softly fall into the ocean.
Through the moon’s shadow,
flowers’ darkened faces
resemble death.

Interview with Yucheng Tao

You’re also a songwriter and a music student. Do you think your musical interests and knowledge inspire your poetry, or vice versa? Do you imagine your poems set to music?

Music’s rhythm gives me inspiration for the basic feelings in my poems. They feel like twin flames to me. I prefer to make independent work for my poetry and for my instrumental guitar music. I have had a lot of my instrumental work published by other magazines.

Since you’re an international student from China, is Mandarin your first language? What is the process like crafting poetry in a language other than your native language? Do you come up with a concept and structure in Mandarin first and then translate, or do you think purely in English for your poetry?

Yes, Mandarin is my first language. At the beginning, I tried very hard to write purely in English. Over time, it became more natural—but sometimes, inspiration still comes to me in fragments of Chinese. When that happens, I’ll translate or transform those images into English. Other times, the ideas arrive already in English. I think I now live between the two languages, and my poetry is shaped by both.

I notice a theme of death in your work, our complex relationship with the inevitability of death. Why and how do you think you’re drawn to write about death?

When I write about death, I’m really writing about consciousness, time, grief, and the fragility of perception. Life is destined to vanish in the cruel cycle of the seasons, so I feel a need to record my reflections on death—and everything bright that will one day be drowned: existence itself, which can be anything, even a voice within.

In the two pieces you sent for our July issue, your protagonists had the chance to enjoy lovely things in life: delicious food, fine clothing, moonlight, wealth, romantic love, although their enjoyment was short-lived. Many poets write about beauty in various forms. What do you consider beautiful and why, and what sorts of beauty are you drawn to in poetry?

I think beauty sometimes comes from fleeting moments—when I touch snow, rain, wind, or when the silent gods arrive with the night. My poems often explore the uncertainty of beauty, because everything can be beautiful in its own way.

How would you describe your poetic style, and has it changed over the years as you developed your craft?

My poetic style moves through darkness across beauty—and something beyond. Every day, I try to change something in my work: the technique, the form, the voice, and the feeling of the unknown.

What poets, or kinds of poetry inspire you? Do you consider your work part of any poetic tradition?

I love The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, and I’m also drawn to Eastern forms that emphasize imagery, like haiku. Baudelaire, Akhmatova, and even the poetic language in Nabokov’s novels have all influenced me. I don’t often think in terms of tradition—I just read what I love, and follow where those poems lead me.

What are you working on now in your writing? What are your next steps?

I’m currently working on a series of poems centered around a character called the Skull-God—a light sci-fi exploration of human nature and emotion. I’ve written about five pieces so far and plan to continue expanding the series. Eventually, I hope to create a mini chapbook, somewhere between 12 to 20 pages.

Yucheng Tao’s poetry and fiction have appeared in a range of literary journals across the US, UK, and internationally. His recent work has been published by Wild Court (King’s College London), Cathexis Northwest Press, The Lake(UK), NonBinary Review (where he was also interviewed), and Red Ogre Review(UK). His writing has also featured in Waymark Literary Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, The Arcanist, and others. He was named a semifinalist for the Winds of Asia Award by Kinsman Quarterly.

The Gate of The Cemetery

The whole world chases me fiercely

As I’m the only prey.

I passed through slaughters, massacres and massive burdens of life. 

I successfully escaped the darkness and brutality of this notorious world.

I walked the long path over the shredded parts, the killed children, the weeping widows and the hungry boys.

I ran away this motionless and silent world miraculously,

Till I reached the gate of the cemetry where life thrives as flowers

And the glamorous light appears from the innocent souls as the burning butterflies.

I walked among tombs and shrines 

Where tranquility and serenity flow.

There, I hear  the alives whisper

It was a wonder to flee the dead world and live peacefully in the heart of the earth.

I suddenly yelled at them loudly

“I honestly envy you”.

I WISH MY STEPMOM DIDN’T HAVE MY PHONE NUMBER

on Father’s Day 

my stepmom texted me-

“I can’t believe you haven’t called your father!”

I wish I could’ve texted her in 1988-

”I can’t believe you’re a home wrecker!”

but I was just a powerless

lost

10 year old 

made of tears

and I didn’t know what to do but wish

I hadn’t forgotten to call my father today

I was sick in bed

I’m about to call him now

thank god for cell phones

now there’s no chance of my stepmom

picking up

She came draped in birdsong

among those tender ponds they’d planted

for us

among our dressgreen lawns.

Immediately,

her smile feathered into action

a fowler’s net over us unwary all

(and I, admittedly, no less the nestling than another).

And when she’d left

our ponds in tatters,

our lawns gone feral again,

her shoes still twittered

In the new forest of I’s

(some trees fallen, some blazed).

REGRETS

I’m sorry we never walked arm/in/arm,

but that was from my own defects

and not your guise.

Next to your lovely limbs I’m left un/armed and fallen.

If I never said you were beautiful,

then it was from my tongue’s neglect

and not my eyes.

(I could tell you were lovely at once, but not tell you.)

Then I finally stripped down to humble,

paraded for you my regrets,

frustrations, sighs…

Keep my rubble.

You may require fill material.

FROM VIENNA, THEIR INTERPRETATIONS OF DREAMS

Two men fought their Mein Kampfs in their minds,

their unconscious wars on vaginas,

their struggles with a less-than mankind.

While Freud, that Jew, painted Austria

as a vast panorama of dicks,

Adolf Hitler, antisemitic,

bent crucifix into swastika.

Reader of signs, and maker of myths,

these, then, our architects, these our smiths.

GLUE ALL GONE

1. At my touch you’d rain from within.

You’d pulse like pigeons on a bush.

Our stormy passions fused our crows

into a rainbow made for me,

(Monochrome to Technicolor!

Distinguished Valor in a poem.)

Each new day after the havoc,

honored like sabbaths tossed in clay,

ceramic artifacts, intact

(though blackened and scratched) among bricks.

We did love the moon’s wallpaper

till stripped by scrapers in sun’s gloves.

2. There’s a toad between my legs

where I used to rear a snake,

and that nest between your limbs

disintegrated to stems.

3. I was determined to climb the mountains

but you always rode the lifts.

I was eager to dare the uncertains

and you wanted to tame the ifs.

Whenever my compass pointed to lost

you would new-rig my spankers,

and when all meridians were crossed

you would balloon my anchor.

I was the pistol in the crystal shop,

and you the glue in the glue gun.

The day came when you were ready to stop,

though my days had just begun.

You had followed in the wake of my wrecks

with your tender of repairs.

And now I gamble on an empty deck,

my hold bereft of a pair.

YOUR MARRIAGE TO THIS OLD MAN

To possess a stone of rules against those pharaoh-boys

and their noisy persuasions and their handsome toys

you needed to meet a thin christ at Calvary

or a buddha declining in his banyan leaves.

The unexpected dwarf you met your wedding night

was a bullrush baby again, enough of knife

to open a Red Sea but not a Promised Land.

All the commandments are sleeping tablets cut from sand.

You’re lost in the desert, and deferred in the dust

your legendary golden calves, your burning bush.

…