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Winter 2024 • Vol. XLVI No. 1 • Poetry |

Oxytocin

A good way to change your 
name is to get a divorce.
There was that one time
she drew the dog’s shadow.
There was that other time she 
melted the painting’s face off.
A shark swam between my 
legs during freeze tag, and 
we had to free her until
she caught the last-one-
standing. She caught him by 
the torso. 

                   The only time
I ever saw the two of them
flirt, she asked him, What’s
your favorite Day of the Dead 
memory. 
                  I don’t have one. 
What’s your favorite emoji.
The one with the face. No,
I mean, 
              out of all of them. 

The one with the face. 

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Photo of Duy Đoàn

Duy Đoàn (pronounced zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game (Yale University Press, 2018), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University. His second collection, Zombie Vomit Mad Libs, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in November 2024.

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Oxytocin

By Duy Đoàn

For years after Mom died, I would get home late at night and say, Hi Pop, where’s Ma. And he’d stay quiet, and you’d chime up, In bed. And I’d […]

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