poetry <3

I want to be / One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial

♥ about me ♥

hello! i'm cindy gao. if you're reading this and somehow don't know me already (which is a wild and, honestly, unlikely possibility, but hi), i'm a sophomore at carnegie mellon university. i study behavioral economics and creative writing, and co-teach a student-run poetry workshop. i also brainrot about poetry a lot, so [gestures vaguely below]. a lot of the stuff i've written / published from high school is under the name "september lin." this is also me! it's just that in high school i had an overwhelming fear of the mortifying ordeal of being known and all that good stuff. welcome to the poetry section of my site :).

♥ other people's poetry that i enjoy ♥

• "monet refuses the operation"
• "ode to my alarm"
• "self-portrait against red wallpaper"

♥ featured poetry ♥

the latin name for the fox is vulpes vulpes. you always thought that sounded nice." - fifth wheel press - i am insane about the last siblings in alice oseman's book radio silence. nominated for the 2025 best small fictions

"in the end, i want to die like the ocean" - the tide rises, the tide falls - there's a joke that poets only write about love and death and this is my death poem, i guess. the tidepool / eyes image i am pretty sure is inspired by tracy k. smith's "my god, it's full of stars" - Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last / Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on / At twilight." anthologized in the pearl

"therefore i am" - beautiful mind issue of snowflake magazine - this one is me being like "hey i make a lot of metaphors to explain my brain. what if i put them all in one poem and see what happens." and the result is me being intensely pretentious and anxious, apparently! this one is ALSO a love poem -- there are specific references in this poem both to my brain and the object of the love poem that i think only i will get -- but that aspect, and, i think, the poem as a whole definetely takes inspiration from k-ming chang's "symmetry." "editor's pick" in the beautiful minds issue

♥ poetry that will soon exist ♥

"walking to the 7-11 at 2 am , i think about jìng yè sī" - the borderline literary magazine (forthcoming) - pretty self-explanatory, i think. i have been going to the 7-11 a lot in college and also having many existential crises.

♥ poetry that currently exists ♥

in reverse chronological order of publication

• "the burning of the houses of lords and commons" - fifth wheel press (forthcoming) - i am insane about the jmw turner painting of the same name. this is also canonically an ars poetica.


• "ars poetica" - eunoia review - had a horrifying dream, went yo this fucks as a poetry premise though


• seeing the eclipse in maine" - eunoia review - plus that one time i kissed my friend outside of the maine trip and fell into a dirtpatch.


• "ten candles" - oakland review - i love my friends. that's it, that's the whole thesis.


• "i lift my lids and all is born again" - oakland review - hey feeling better after being mentally ill for a long time feels kinda cool that's kinda nice.


• "COOPERATE / COOPERATE" - renaissance review - this poem is based on payoff matrices! i was doing my econ homework and i was looking at the little payoff matrix diagram for the prisoner's dilemma and went "wait hold up this would actually slap so hard as a poetry format" (and it's been done before! i found this as i was googling to see if stuff like this already exists "game theory" by zoe hitzig


• "ode for the summer before a friend leaves for college" - blue daisies journal - what it says on the tin.


• "letters found in the patterns light makes when it gleams off the leaves of a poisonous plant" - issue 2 of lovers literary journal - i'm so normal about this is how you lose the time war, i promise


• "and they throw the matches down into the glitter" - ice lolly review - the title is a misquoting (oops) of a line from fall out boy's "rat-a-tat" - there's a certain vibe in some songs/ poems i like? like biting someone? or something you can bite on? something hard that you would think about as you stare at a starry sky from the roof of a car? that i was trying to harness in this poem. i don't think it fully succeeds but oh well. this one is also me being like "hey how many crime puns can i fit in one poem?" and surprise of surprises, it also turned into a love poem- i'm not sure if it is, but i would be incredibly unsurprised if this is also based on "this is how you lose the time war."


• "lost boys and windowsill thieves (haibun for slowly growing up" - the bibliopunk


• "magnetism" - adoxography lit (now defunct :( )