issue 8

june 30th, 2025

editors’ note

It’s our round issue! It’s our Pride-month faggotry issue! It’s our existing in a trash timeline with evil billionaires issue! It’s the issue of the issues. Underblong goes political. Underblong is going to the polls. Underblong tries politics. Underblong! Who have you become, in your 8th year? What creatures have you befriended, what trees have you also befriended?

It is us, your blongsters, Chen Chen and Sam Herschel Wein, Sam and Chen, Undertow and Oblong, SamChen ChenWein and Anonymous Chinchilla in the google doc, Mickey Mouse and that chubby chipmunk from that chipmunk movie franchise, two whacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubeguys. Wacky waving inflatably to each of you, our dear blongees. Our sweet seductresses. 

Hello. We have, once again, the blongiest poets for you. Poets who, in their author photos, look like they’re in a teacup ride, having the best and blurriest experience. Poets in formal clothes, poets who are somehow in the shot and also on their phone screens??? I N N O V A T I O N. Poets in black and white, and poets who are not in pajamas but I wish they were, so we could say, right now, these poets are in pajamas.

And their poems. Their POEMS!!!!! Jenna Jaco asks us to reimagine the Anne Geddes calendar, and boy do we. Charity E. Yoro includes the most urgent question we’ve ever seen in a poem, asking “can you please go write a poem or something?” Dia Roth is “getting fucked / up by its harsh waves,” one of the best line breaks of literal existence. Ayesha Raees declares that she is going “to live / this life as Life !! !” 

And wow, the titles. Cindy Ko hit us with one of the best titles we’ve ever seen, “you think you know someone and then you find out they play the erhu.” Eric Tran makes us sob before we’ve even read his poem with the title, “If I Call You Cousin I Love You / Palestine You Are My Cousin.”  junkyard ambrose finishes the issue with a title our entire blongteam screamed to publish, “PRAYER FROM A TRANSSEXUAL BOY WHO WAS ONCE A PRETTY GIRL.” 

Every poem in this issue makes us, like, happy. Maybe that sounds like an easy, simple emotion to feel or find, but it’s not. Not lately, not especially now, not especially ever or now or anytime but definitely now. But how could we not find it, returning, always, to Underblong, to these poems of wild imagination and deep care? 

We’re happy to be in the company of these words, these writers, these ways through the capitalist, earth-destroying, genocidal death machine. We keep thinking about Jae Nichelle saying in her bio that “she believes in all of our collective ability to contribute to radical change.” And we have been holding onto this belief, trying to practice it day by day, together.  

Please join us, friends and befrienders, lovers and lovelenders, pancake makers and pancake enjoyers, to Underblong Issue 8, we just think it’s great. Bienvenue~ to you~ and you~

Les editeurs,
C+S

poems

Jenna Jaco - “Self Portrait as Anne Geddes Calendar”

Eric Tran - “If I Call You Cousin I Love You / Palestine You Are My Cousin”

Cindy Ko - “you think you know someone and then you find out they play the erhu”

Hannah Polinski - “Uno”

Dia Roth - “SL*T”

Ayesha Raees - “Ban”

Maria Gray - “I May Be Stupid”

Gabrielle Grace Hogan - “PARIS SYNDROME”

Daryl Lim Wei Jie - “I love that you’re on the menu”

Jake Phillips - “Self-Portrait as Deer Population”

Robin Gow - “ai image of us”

Jae Nichelle - “You Goes to the Gyno”

Charity E. Yoro - “in the aftermath of thirty four”

junkyard ambrose - “PRAYER FROM A TRANSSEXUAL BOY WHO WAS ONCE A PRETTY GIRL”

Jasjyot Singh Hans is an illustrator unendingly inspired by an explosive neon mix of fashion, music and pop culture. He has a constant regard for things past and a voracity for all that is current. He studied animation film design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and has an MFA in Illustration Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. His work chronicles themes of body image, sexuality and self love.

Jasjyot's work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration. His clients include Google, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Penguin Books and Vogue India.