ALT “Past Looking,” a delicate painting by Nara Allsop in muted colors with dandelions, ladybugs, a pair of brown hands pointing gun fingers at two ends, joined by an eye and leaf-shaped wings.

ALT Back cover of Shō No. 9 lists names of 45 contributors and a preview of the cover art by Nara Allsop

ALT “Past Looking,” a delicate painting by Nara Allsop in muted colors with dandelions, ladybugs, a pair of brown hands pointing gun fingers at two ends, joined by an eye and leaf-shaped wings. Black text on lavender background.

ALT Award-winning poet Chen Chen makes his prose debut with this collection of essays that both charms and challenges. Beginning with a collage featuring the author in a glorious wig before moving into a series of half-flirty, half-prayerful letters addressed to a queer Chinese deity, this is not your typical craft book. Chen Chen's In Cahoots with the Rabbit God upends notions of the poet as pure ethereal being, always singing, eternally solitary. In place of lofty transcendence, these socially engaged and deeply personal essays/interventions bring the discussion of poetry back down to earth, back to the body and the senses, back to sensual experience and everyday life. Instead of a god who towers above it all, at the heart of this book is a god who curls up beside you as you procrastinate on your writing by waiting for some guy to text you back.

ALT I’m standing in front of a garden with some small trees & many pink flowers. I’m wearing a pale pink hat, dark blue glasses, a floral sweater, & pale pink shorts. I’m holding a copy of my second book.

ALT An Evening Discussion Chen Chen What if we got a gun? I whispered from my pillow to you on yours. I’m so against it in theory, I continued, but in practice, & these days … Then I burst, became a wave of laughter, & you joined me. We were a tidal giggle. & then I felt a huge wobble, some cosmic shudders, perhaps from a god with skin problems unresolved from adolescence.

ALT Unreleased from adolescence, childhood, I saw how I was spiritually still in uncomfortable overalls & overall over none of it. You too, it seemed, as what you then said was, What if I became a bodybuilder? You said, you spoke this to me at normal volume like it was regular info, like we were at Planet Fitness or in Galaxy Muscle, not in our bedroom, our bed. What if, you said, I bodybuilt so good, so Arnold, to the point of the world turning totally unhomophobic? Not

ALT a speck of homophobia left, not one subatomic particle a miserable homophobe, the whole damn globe, amazing, right? & I said, Or I could become a stronger writer, more cutting in my musings, more ferocious in my music? In bed, in response, you looked at me fondly, probably the fondest you’ve ever looked at me, & said, Baby. You will. But how about we do both? Both? I asked. Writing & bodybuilding? Writing, you said, & the gun.