MICHAEL LEONG

July 2025 Postcard from Michael Leong: 

I love the title of Michael Leong’s 2025 poetry and poetics prose collection: Dear Vase Already Shattered Against the Fragile Floor. Each individual piece in the book—whether a poem or an essay—might be considered shards of the whole “Vase” as the book. It seems apt, therefore, that Michael’s postcard presents “variations beginning with a phrase from ‘Disorientations’,” a poem that I replicate below. When a vase shatters on the floor, and if it’s of a material like glass or porcelain, it can be impossible to round up every fragment that occurred from the break. In this sense, I feel like the words on the postcard are tiny pieces that did not make it into the book before it was published. If we consider the book a vase, we could consider it a Kintsugi-repaired vase to create a whole object (book) but without including all the parts of, or sources which initially made up, the object. As such, I—as the recipient of Michael’s postcard—can only be honored by this postcard. What a gift! Thank you, Michael.

As background, here is the poem referenced by the postcard:

But I recommend his entire book and suggest you check it out! It's the latest froma poet who’s also one of the brightest thinkers in the contemporary arena. We know this, too, by the identity of his publisher: the much respected Black Square Editions. Here is the link to Dear Vase Already Shattered Against the Fragile Floor (Black Square Editions, 2025).