Marisa Lin

cantfindit

Marisa Lin (she/they) is a poet, policy researcher, and Minnesota native. Her work is published or forthcoming in Poetry South, Porter House Review, Cimarron Review, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day. Their debut poetry chapbook, Dream Elevator, was published by Kernpunkt Press (2024). In 2023, Marisa was awarded fellowships by the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley, Roots Wounds Words, and Kearny Street Workshop. They have previously attended workshops with the VONA, Community of Writers, and the Kenyon Review. Marisa graduates with a Masters Degree in Public Policy from UC Berkeley in 2024. Source

excerpt from “Tiananmen Square, 1989”

there are stars in their caps, soldiers

crouched as if the revolution

only walks at knee level. before them, a sea 

 

of students: one adjusting his glasses, his face 

turned towards some invisible turmoil, 

this refusal that could bring everything 

 

tomorrow or simply life. or simply 

bullets slicing the Square, shouts 

& fears running & running into bodies

 

that ripple 

onto concrete 

like children 

 

napping under Beijing sun, 

eyelids still as peace—          still

as red pooling, as ink

 

resisting its meaning—           resisting

the fist of a government crushing ambitions

into pennies

Published:

2024

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Agency

Doubt & Fear

Education & Learning

Memory & The Past

Politics

Strength & Resilience

Violence & War

Literary Devices:

Caesura

a break between words within a metrical foot

Simile

a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”

Tercet

A stanza of three lines of verse that rhyme together or are connected by rhyme with an adjacent stanza.