conman in summer
By Vivian Huang
“The grifter is an artiste who invests in the long con.”
— Jacob Weisberg
You spill the lamppost over & smile. Yesterday,
you shook hands with the fisherman, striking
deals for the new batch of redheads & snapbacks. Buy
one, get one free. No – make it $50 for four. The ocean breaks
your nose. In your birthland, you are destined to be a con, build
sandcastles the size of your index finger & sell it for the size
of a corpse. With every deal, the land dries
over & what is left is the symphony oceans play
for fake, crepuscular beings like you. Somewhere
far from the penthouse you bought off of an antique
store down the streets of a dystopian Chinatown, the fisherman
named Paul is mouthing your name. Burning a doll
in your place. The lamppost falls over again & you are
stuck smiling. This is what you do to survive: rip
a new one for the men named Paul, give them the oldest
batch of redheads & snapbacks & maybe blondes if you
are feeling generous, & spill the lamppost over. But yesterday,
your lover handed you a coupon to the hospital next door,
told you they were dying from an E.coli infection & today,
somewhere across the planet, you are caught burning
yourself, running away from your homeland. A teacher
tells you kids are starving & your problems
are like ants. You break up a couple for PDA: a redhead &
a blond. The fisherman named Paul gives you a kiss. But
the dystopian Chinatown looks pretty & the ocean forgives
you. This is how you truly survive: the lamppost
spills over & you smile under the rubble, opening your
palms for the next batch of fake, crepuscular beings like you.
Vivian Huang is a young poet from Irvine, California. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Polyphony Lit, The Ice Lolly Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and Princeton University, among others, and she is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Cloudscent Journal.