Abode

Abode is a debut collection of interconnected prose and free verse poems by Jun-long Lee that delve with vertiginous momentum into homes—both material and interior—lost and rediscovered from the inside looking in: they are excavations of nested domestic spheres furnished with the bricolage of ruin and decay. Lee takes readers through hallucinatory geographies, plant-haunted spaces, and dreamlike corridors flooded with water and light, accompanied by an ever-changing subject that cannot make itself feel at home in its body, its country, or its language.

“‘No one disappears alone—’ these linked poems are a pastoral freak-out of the repercussions of a morally tainted language lineage. Halfbelonging, wordnulled, nothingshaped: the human spore, ‘to people nearby worlds,’ comes across as ‘slightly rotten fruits that would disappear faster than I could forget them.’ Yet, with foresight and empathy, Jun-long Lee’s renewed commitment to this one solitary abode is within our reach.”

—Weyman Chan, author of Witness Back at Me

About the Author

Jun-long Lee is a Canadian poet, visual artist, and filmmaker. His poems have appeared in Conjunctions, Jubilat, The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, and elsewhere.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.