First Tuesdays Presents Eugene Lim

When: February 2, 2021
Where: This will be a virtual First Tuesdays reading. For security purposes, you must click this link in order to register for the event. Once you register, you will receive another email with instructions about joining the reading. (If you use multiple email addresses, note that the response will come to the email address you used when you registered.)
Please note: In order to make sure we have time to do a cento, I will ask everyone to limit themselves to one poem. If you would like to participate in the open mic, send me an email. You will read in the order you sign up.
More Information: Richard Jeffrey Newman

Eugene Lim is the author of the novels Fog & Car, The Strangers, Dear Cyborgs and the forthcoming Search History (Coffee House Press, 2021). His writings have appeared in Granta, The Baffler, The Believer, Fence, Little Star, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He is the librarian at Hunter College High School, runs Ellipsis Press, and lives in Queens, NY.

///

Here is a sample of his work called “The Parable of Our Giant:”

Once upon a time, all our nerves are intertwined and we react to pain and joy—gross stimulus—in coordinated, gross ways. So we think we are connected and almost one organism. Gradually our nerves disentangle and we sit in the middle of empty rooms. Small portholes—or perhaps round, desert mirrors—allow us fleeting glimpses of others in identical cells. Then we each notice a trapdoor beneath us and, crawling through it, find a giant controlled by the sum of all our thoughts. I can’t bid the giant do my individual will, but feel some relief to discover another unity, one without control. We all hover at our hatches, between the world of the one giant body and our lonely but familiar cells, seemingly paralyzed.

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.