Elena Zhang
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ezhang77.bsky.social
Elena Zhang
@ezhang77.bsky.social
900 followers 730 following 950 posts
Writer | Chicago | Work in HAD, Maudlin House, The Citron Review + more | Pushcart Prize and BotN nom | Best Microfiction ‘24, '25
https://elenalzhang.wordpress.com/writing/
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ezhang77.bsky.social
Practicing drawing some faces
Nine cartoony faces drawn with watercolor and colored pencil
November 21, 2025 at 8:46 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Pretty sure we were singing the Land Before Time song here. Miss you mom.
Beautiful Chinese woman standing next to little girl, both holding microphones for karaoke
November 19, 2025 at 4:51 AM
ezhang77.bsky.social
One of mine, “Lemons,” in @frozenseapoetry.bsky.social

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
I lost my little sister near a lemon tree. The morning clouds shuddered and made a life. I patted my pockets for hours before giving up. The lemons were as big as throats. It's easier to say sister than god. It's easier to desire than pray.
November 16, 2025 at 3:23 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
When the insomnia is really hitting
Charlie from twin peaks the return saying I’m so sleepy
November 13, 2025 at 6:18 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Breaking: the cat is in her hammock. I repeat, the cat is in her hammock.
Cat curled up in grey hammock, part of cat tree, in front of window
November 10, 2025 at 6:37 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
One of mine in @bruisermag.com

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Persistence of Vision I call your name from the bottom of a mountain. It's midnight. You vomit your guts into my hands. They're warm and pink. They smell like roses. It's what sea cucumbers do when they get scared, you say. I don't care what sea cucumbers do, I reply. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I hold the guts close to my face, and read them a bedtime story.
November 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Probably the last warm day of fall in Chicago
Tree with red leaves, Lake Michigan, geese, leaves on grass
November 7, 2025 at 8:25 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Ah crap…
Knit Picks. FAVORITE YARNS $2 $4 $6 3 days only! Our Biggest Deal
November 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
One of mine in Scaffold Lit

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
the pianist by elena zhang The pianist sits down on the concert hall stage. She has childhood in her ears. It laughs in c minor. Thousands of eyes blink in tandem. Her fingers are grandmothers. They forget where home is. All they need are the right keys, then muscle memory will take over. But where should she start? Where to actually start?
November 2, 2025 at 1:30 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
I don’t know what my music taste says about me
The Blasting Company 273 STREAMS Over the Garden Wall 88 STREAMS Portishead 6 STREAMS Lisa O'Neill 4 STREAMS Ezra Furman 3 STREAMS Johnny Flynn 2 STREAMS
November 1, 2025 at 5:09 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
leonliteraryreview.com/issue-32-ele...
Ghost Nebula On the night your space shuttle launches, I walk outside to my backyard and tilt my head heavenward. I imagine seeing the stellar nurseries glowing pink and red, pulsing with newborn stars, as heavy as my love for you, as weightless as your nebulous body will soon be. You were once so small, just clumps of dust gathering together to spin a gravity. How I wish I could still see the shimmering past, the twinkling of your laughter. I run my fingers over my belly, still marked with the ridges and craters of your arrival. You told me not to worry, but I just shook my head and smiled. That's what mothers do, I said. I think of my own mother up there, a neutron star bursting into radio waves. And then I hear it. That faint lullaby. The song I hummed to you as you slept in your crib, a song I sing to you now, one billion years old.
October 30, 2025 at 5:09 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Eve Ewing with her back turned on Rahm Emanuel at the CPL foundation dinner
October 30, 2025 at 2:35 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
A poem of mine in @psmokejournal.bsky.social
I have this warehouse that holds hundreds of fridges, and you can put your mothers inside the humming coffins for a small fee, not to freeze your mothers of course, but to keep them cold enough to preserve love your whole life, and you can visit them from time to time so you'll be able to remember the shape of their hands, and the perfume of their skin, but you should know that eventually everyone stops visiting, because the mothers, when they come out, are not the same, but trust me, it's all worth it in the end.
October 28, 2025 at 5:53 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
One of mine, from my zine “I Gave Birth” (Rinky Dink Press)

rinky-dink-press.square.site/product/seri...

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
I gave birth to a bone It came out shattered. I put the snow powder on my face. A million diatoms glittering like opals. So heavy on my eyelids.
October 26, 2025 at 2:18 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Daily walk on the lakefront trail for my mental health
Red and green leaves on trees against blue sky
October 24, 2025 at 10:25 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
ICYMI, I have two micros up at the wonderful @hexliterary.bsky.social! Here’s one:

hexliterary.com?p=2909
AT THE MOVIES In this movie, Jesus and my mother are at a bar drinking mojitos. The music swells as Jesus unzips his skin, revealing a metallic endoskeleton. The audience claps politely. Jesus's eyeball pops out, but my mother just pushes it back in with a familiar sigh. I finally rise from my movie theater seat to embrace her. The lights flash red. How did my mother become younger than me? While the curtains close, Jesus fiddles with the drained batteries in his chrome torso. I don't tell him I have some extra AAs in my jeans pocket. We start to walk out of the theater, but Jesus can't make it past the exit door.
October 24, 2025 at 2:07 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Daily walk by the lake for my mental health
Blue sky, fluffy clouds, Lake Michigan
October 23, 2025 at 9:51 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Emilie Menzel, “The Girl Who Became a Rabbit”
To speak the haunting, let the body be seen through the trees, and the trees through the body, and the body not be seen at all. Tree branch grief. Wind bristle grief. Giddy with sun reminded of ghost. It was collaring; I could not cage it. It was lowing; I could not speak it. What is to speak and to speak of it forming, the moving it forward, the living as child, the skin still redreaming? The sheep through the trees, seen rough but not fully. Seen bright but not fully. Seen clean. Seen alone.
October 23, 2025 at 8:23 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Autumnal Elena
Picture of my face in front of trees with yellow, red, green leaves
October 22, 2025 at 4:05 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Eliot Weinberger, “The Life of Tu Fu”

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
So dark I eat dinner at breakfast. So rainy I imagine the mountain washing away. The downpour so strong fish in the river sank. The mud so bad I was sorry I asked you over.
October 19, 2025 at 3:13 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
One of mine in @havehashad.com

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Union Station Sit and shudder to life. Twist the glowing red numbers. If you predict the loss, remember to point the way. Relief is at the next stop.
October 19, 2025 at 1:54 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
I’ve got a micro in @folklorereview.bsky.social’s fantastic Skeletal series!
www.folklorereview.com/mico-series-...
Bone Fishing We went bone fishing in the Lake of Shining Light. Soon, there was enough to build a sister. She was smooth as a dragon's pearl. Sister, we cried, teach us how to die. But our bone sister simply laughed, teeth chattering like cicada hums in the waning summer.
October 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Pretty fall trees by the Lakefront
trees with red leaves on top and blue sky
October 16, 2025 at 10:15 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
October 16, 2025 at 6:44 PM
ezhang77.bsky.social
Chicagoooo
Line of carved pumpkins on staircase saying go bears, fuck ice, free Palestine
October 15, 2025 at 9:45 PM