Wendy Xu

Wendy Xu is a poet and writer, most recently the author of The Past (Wesleyan University Press, 2021) and Phrasis (Fence Books, 2017), named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Granta, Poetry, Conjunctions, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and widely elsewhere. A new book Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds: Form, Futurity, and Documentary Desire will be published October 2025 by the Poets on Poetry series at the University of Michigan Press. Xu is assistant professor of writing at The New School in New York City.

Submissions

Efflorescence

How can I explain to a pedestrian the joy of riding my bicycle through the drippy streets at night, my single headlight bobbing, the light sharp on one side, cuts through a tree having a dream of itself, everything tethered to its twin-dark, thoughts cast a shadow, shadows cast a word if you lower yourself to a hush, the word is ordinary like a word, is cabbage. Sometimes smoke.

Efflorescence : Gloss