Pedestrian By Valerie Hsiung

A poet’s novel, a body, a house, haunting and haunted by an unnamed horror.Emerging from the uncanny space of lullaby and ghost story, The pedestrian meanders down a labyrinth of divinatory time where crimes require a more defective detective. To understand the source of this text’s trauma, the reader must become an emotional detective, tracing the wound by its shadow. Meaning emerges through obfuscation, suggestion, and echo—courting what cannot be seen head-on to create a haunted grammar of grief. The pedestrian operates like an inverted pastoral, turning kitchens into underworlds, sidewalks into sacred sites—it “listens” as much as it speaks, responding to forces beyond itself.