We are teeming with multitudes
lives we carry, undead buried, inheritance
like rubies planted with a fist.
The multiplication of replication divides
historical half-lives,
that seep from our selves,
like blood overflowing a rag.
And what is (1 / Regret)^powered?
It’s Hope’s^exponent devoured generationally
And generationally _{lim → ∞} until we are microbial.
You see, living carries us out (in
        dark entropic waves, it carries us)
And as our multitudes teem, we are heavy biomes.

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Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He writes about alienation, distance, and inherited grief in the Asian American experience. He is a 2004 James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Inscape Journal, Unbroken: Prose Poems, Heavy Feather Review, Eunoia Review, Unleash Lit, DIHP, Anxiety Press, Pen Pushers, Longmeadow Literary, and other publications.