Lisa Delan

July 2025 | poetry

Trauma, according to Webster’s

“An injury caused by an extrinsic agent or

behavioral state resulting from

considerable mental disruption and

duress; acute physical suffering or

emotional upset inflicted by a mechanism or

force that causes trauma.” I’ve spent years

grappling with the trauma that tanked my kids’ mental

health, and the diagnoses that have dogged them.

Intimate abuses are potent, and they suffered the double

jeopardy of their father’s gaslighting ire and uncle’s

kaleidoscopic offenses. Claims of familial

love conflated with cruelty create a funhouse

mirror wherein truth is distorted, its reflection unstable.

Nietzsche wrote, “the constitution of existence might be such that

one would be destroyed by a complete knowledge of it.”

Perhaps this is why the truth of trauma is so elusive. It is dangerous.

Quixotic armchair analysts tout treatments to

repair the damage wrought by trauma, but there is no ready

salvation to be found—recovery is a lifetime’s work.

Therapeutic tools are just that, the wrench wielded

under the hood when the engine kicks. The shop

vac when everything falls to the floor and you don’t know

where the mess ends and you begin.

Xanax to take the edge off the rising panic.

You can only understand the work through metaphor.

Zayde told the kids to “get well soon.”

Lisa Delan

Lisa Delan’s poetry and prose have been featured in a broad range of literary publications, and she has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poems have been set to music by leading classical composers, and she has written the libretto for a choral work debuting in 2025 in her adopted hometown of San Francisco. When she is not writing, you can find the soprano, an international performer who records for the Pentatone label, singing songs on texts by some of her favorite poets.

Kimmy Chang

July 2025 | poetry

chrysalis

first bite in an anorexic’s recovery

i’ve lost the iron sting

of leaves once devoured—

green bitterness a stain

on the backs of my teeth.

“still hungry?” cicada chuffs

from its split-shell pulpit.

my half-open mouth,

raw as nacre, tilts

toward a wind-tossed bloom.

i touch the map of my face:

caterpillar hunger, butterfly refrain

pressed behind glass.

inside, stored fat thins;

sun-blade spears my shell.

cells liquefy, re-script themselves

into trembling wing.

house lights rise.

sequined skirt, gaunt face,

i study the mirror-dark oval in front of me—

one veined leaf breathing open.

i lift it like a passport,

let chlorophyll crack

against the dark of my tongue.

Kimmy Chang

Kimmy Chang is a poet and computer vision researcher. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Amsterdam Quarterly, Bombay Gin, and more. A recent Pushcart nominee, she lives in Texas with her husband, two chaotic fluffs, and a steadily growing army of 3D prints.