Poetry
love languages & other tongues
By Ana Chen
I. first kiss: badly-vented dorm rooms
teeth – a sinner would do no better than you against
these nails & winter fangs, phlegm in your hands or
is that blood? thighs webbed with
shame & womanhood, map of a land
neither house nor home. silent shrieks –
II. wedding veils: dolled bedrooms/ripped jeans/bikinis/other blades
& so goes the silk: torn, slits
up each hip, erasure art
embroidery. you can’t even call it
a travesty of a tapestry –
& the curtain is up. mama used
to sew your qipaos. tears & breath
heavy in your hands.
III. honeymoon: some stage or another
low moans of cello on
tea sets, cheap paint over
dollar-store iron. & when
they purr at you perform girl you
do it slowly, let your skin loiter
in sweaty palms, hair in
salivating gazes. behind the gauze you
tremble. try to cleave the tongues
from your breasts, try
to count your dignity on fingers
perfumed gold.
IV. within: gardens/solitude
& heat suffocates you so you
find beauty in the cold: the
monochrome glitter of ice, the
sticky snare of electric music. you once
buried yourself in the snow, watched
your skin shimmer blue. baptized yourself,
licked & serenaded your sins to sleep. &
when their skins slap yours, swell
your stomach putrid with fruit & fish,
you close your eyes, chant to remember
that in this world heat
is so small against
the cold.
syzygy
By Ana Chen
I. ophelia/polonius
undine, she. undone by the boys who
swore to her breasts
as you stumble ashen in these half-mornings: i
despise your brummagem breaths. who
gave you leave to leaf through age like a manual,
by the stillness of her breath, laughing knives
through her thighs between her windfall
sighs. she tried first
to paint wrinkled wisdoms through sluggish words,
to ferment like the wine you warn me never to touch: bitter with
afternotes of self-loathing – or is that resignment? i dream
to drown herself in alcohol, you know. tore
blunt teeth down her throat & screamed
& that is the question:
when she realized these spirits are as foreign
as the blossoms romancing her hips.
& sorrows
may come in battalions but i see only a single soldier
of desire. deserter & trekker: these vast lands
warm with wanting, concupiscence winds
tumbling like skullduggery schadenfreude: masochism
in reverse. there is a boy who once swore
laughing wanton against these snakelike skins. if you were
to be
there on the night before ophelia swallowed sea & sin,
you would’ve seen her peel down the stars. she longed for another
bludgeoned body, lusted for lukewarm limbs:
the jack to my sally – did you know? there was
another jack he joked about too, tongue wet
with more ease than i have ever
waded through these
shallows of roses, violets knee deep.
& the moon was there, white & merry as ophelia
whispered about my
womanhood. his voice is irony,
bled red with fury. mercurial
laughter, windchime
allure.
but who am i to be wooed by this whirlwind
wheedling, stitches haphazard, this ragdoll desperation &
these skeleton kisses? for all i know you are
these legions of flowers,
marching her to her grave. she was no
true general, you know, having shed her skirts
beneath the stairs of the castle lobby & he
is in my grave, swearing olympus
could be no grander than our tragedy, pleading
for her tongue. yet still they floundered
after her, this fake aphrodite, singing
for her to spring scarlet
never to be
from these rabid foams.
II. gertrude/hamlet
guilt must fester chartreuse within
her bruised tongue, so she pleads with
the sleep i have lost between the crevices
of your breaths: it outnumbers
the swollen warmth between her womb & thighs, the
hourglass neck of her perverted midnights,
the poisonous cups my father warned me
never to touch. these foolish trophies, penurious paroxysms:
my shame a symphony of debauched
dilettante choruses between
drunken sheets: dead
waters. could these tongues
shatter gold? i could play victim, loathe the voice
that claims breakage
but not by her hand. gertrude shared a bathtub
with ophelia that night, drowned alongside the girl
as i swallow my own skin just
to taste myself. words like hot oil, coy.
i’ve burned you thrice over
but these spirits were no stranger to her. two kings’ teeth
had once mounted her throat & this fire she ravaged
with a sickly pleasure.
& they laugh when i shout, their eyes
byzantine with loathing for me
& for themselves. i deserve
ophelia’s tears: gertrude couldn’t stand them nor
those maddened poppies, those garlands
of gunpowder. she shattered
nothing less: whore, filth
between these pitted lips & gutted
promises. i emptied
their bottle right then & there, between the thighs she named
my sanity & my pride: what is
this desire – stop this jaundiced janus:
treachery & treason. fled from the bathroom, feet
cold on stubbled floors, red vintage in her veins as
screams split in two. slitted sheets,
bubbling throats – i think of
penelope, for i am both her & odysseus:
– did you know? – the moon cajoled her
pearled folded breasts. quartered herself
within the armor & arms of
the anchor & the mast, praying faith
tethers me to cold thighs & colder beds.
but i know
her king husband brother son
self, screamed & slit her ribs
from left to right, shredded
odysseus’ serenades to circe between the
witching hours. so why should i be the sole siren?
this feast rots from satin to satin, buried in
each seam between her shoulder blades, cleaved
her viscera from the gullet of
the king’s funeral, the queen’s
matrimony. here: consider
her hips. when she finished she
was numb. was small. was
her son, furious but
furtive. would you tear asunder
her breasts, your shame? would you shred
woman?
me?
mute dumb metastasis, these shards
of glass & guilt. tonight
i do not need a thousand
misfortunes when this one suffices
to sling & suffocate these shameless sheets. tonight
gertrude envies
the moon & the mad girl. tonight gertrude
spills petrichor sin from her soiled throat &
i desert this land for your arms. apparel
proclaims the woman but here i stand: weary &
naked.
tonight she must
settle here: let me fall asleep against your
unknowing breaths, one callow lie to
another. take my hand & let us
stumble home.
III. chang-e/houyi
it was a harrowing journey from
sibilant sword to
ossified solitude so she
& the apple tree & i have
unearthed our wombs. our words. our
insecurities. so i find myself quite safe from your
lies. between the craters or
maybe within one, catches
musings. i have one too: i don’t want you here, not that
you need telling – sometimes your astronomical flights
terrify me, whiplash me with
her breath & bearings. reminisces on the impermanence
of impossibility, the denouement
of divinity. has she has shaved enough
sanity. shades of sulfur. when did i decide
to be called goddess?
flights of angels sing me to rest. yesterday
i did not like my given face so i sculpted a new one
from sandpaper skin & cayenne teeth. you must be confused
& planets away, her husband burns her blood oranges & cakes, washes
his sins from sons and suns. he says she
was a hero, swallowed the hemlock called immortality
so i find triumph
in mock kisses. i give you my tongue
to sanctify both it &
herself. this story is the only one
that will salvage his sanity
& you set my neck ablaze: the
right side. & i will moan at your lips &
what did you say?
so she listens with sadness. fingers strangling these
unbruised breasts, shrieks savage to these
deaf nights & deafer men: she does not know why
i have already drowned in your arms? alas, my thief, if
guilt is artless jealousy then this must hang
alongside qi baishi. i laugh because i don’t know why
she left but she is glad
she did. maybe she fled because
i find no shame in
her thirst being too big; she longed to swallow the night before
it swallowed her. maybe she tired of waxing her thighs; maybe she was
just bored. some nights she will swim in
the silken pleasure that is
stretch marks & skin but some nights i
suffocate it because
the fume of her husband’s offerings: they reek
of sweet words & sweat &
sex. some nights she is not sure which one she misses more:
conscience or cowardness, which
births the other
from this searing?
& some nights she hurls beauty
& balefulness at her worshippers, laughs a bitter breath
as she stomachs their perfumed paintings.
i do not think you remember
my face, the bareness that is
my eyebrows, but i trust
they sketch her wrong: in actuality she has
a mole on her left cheek and her nose
is crooked. tonight her real tongue serenades
the eclipse of our lips & it’s ironic when i consider
two women &
the void, voices a spirited syzygy
of misery. & she marvels at the oxymoron that is
purity & singleness: my tongue has
only ever melted against yours but already i
am dirty, clots of womanhood in this
closeness: each woman’s feet woven bloody
through the other’s womb but sorrow haemorrhaging
from so many different veins. & she marvels at
mourning. or morning? i am so far
from you & so much at peace that i cannot blame
chang-e for swallowing immortality. perhaps
queen and maiden: she was once
both. perhaps
the coldness of these stars baptized her enough
to drain the weary sea named womanhood.
she inhales
the smoothness of their skin, ubiquitous pearls:
& now the sun
is rising. already i am ancient, heir
to a lineage of scarlet silence. & i remember
four eons ago she too held a bottle &
a razor. trimmed away her hair with her
doubts, silenced follicle as folly, murmured that
my innocence ends at
the throat of a bottle. perhaps if i got myself
to a nunnery or any public school
although quite unshaven, she is much more naked
than either of these women. she is forgotten
for the sake of slaying these rouge rogue thoughts – i could swim in
white, swallow veils. but why should i, when i already count myself queen
of these infinitesimal spaces? for tonight i name myself sin
to the point of distortion, forsaken
to the point of perfection. woman, not flesh:
& tonight i knight myself
divinity.
Mosaic
By Chaim Durst
Response to Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art
You say loneliness is my master,
my confidant, my only friend –
So, solitude’s become my pastor.
Recover further, recover faster:
you’re clearly on a downward trend:
A part of me still craves a master.
Can’t you take that one step past her?
You must have known that it would end.
She’s only been a lifetime fixture.
Even while you were with her,
all you wanted was a friend.
For that alone I earned her censure.
Straighten out your broken posture
or else the pain will never end.
Time with her was no disaster.
What other names are on your roster?
You’re not too broken I contend.
I say, Loneliness, come be my master.
Hold me in your arms of plaster.
By Francesca Mall
Once there was you and me
A concentric circle
Tranquil
Whole
Our hearts intersecting
At multiple points
Across the plane
And then it cracked
It changed shape
I became just a line
Sometimes curvy
Sometimes straight
Looking to
Connect again
With the parts of my heart
I had lost
Now
We are parallel lines
Running back and forth
along the same grid
Without meeting
Little do we know
That
The universe
Always meant for us to
converge
Then
Separate
In a dance of beating hearts
And yet
Always
There is the possibility
Of our reconnection
Of everything
Coming full circle
And
Even if it doesn’t
The change it made will never really leave
The thing about convergence is
That once you
are apart of someone
and then you separate
The point they met in your heart
Becomes
An open place
It is a part of who you are
And who you will become
You will carry that space
Of
Love & loss
Into
Your next
Heart merger
Then all of a sudden
You will find
Your heart’s holes
Filled up with
All the intersecting
Points of love
That new heartlines bring
And
Yet you might still have
Some holes left open
But remember
All these holes in our hearts
Are
Chances
For new beginnings
Melancauliflower
By Jaimee Lee
If you could describe Sadness, what would she look like?
Perhaps, she is the lady in black
Holding onto her grievances,
Telling herself that she still lives
Yet, carries around a carcass
Unaware and indifferent.
Perhaps, she is the overachieving girl
Who had victory in her grasp,
Only to choke at the last second
And miss her last shot
To play in the finals.
Perhaps, she is the young woman
In a state of overbearing guilt,
Blaming herself for hurting someone she loves,
But carries on as he does
As they both mask the pain.
Her hair bounces, matching her important strides, as she walks down the city street infected by the morning madness. She makes no notice of the following eyes and drifts through the crowd. She is clothed in strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
Sadness is complicated,
Sadness is a little naive,
Sadness is empathetically self-destructive,
But she is trying –
She is an enigma.
Sadness is always changing;
She continues to challenge herself
And grow despite all mistakes she makes,
So that one day,
Sadness might say,
"I feel happy today,"
But a little bit of sadness will always stay.
They wonder why she feels familiar, but never try to understand her. Instead, they clamour to her warmth and search for that little piece of home. But she opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She goes by many names, but when the heart-throb fades, she is known as Nostalgia. They look back and see her for what she is.
People dwell in the presence of Sadness and fear the journey to find Nostalgia.
She is the one with vivid memories
Of her husband in the garden,
Tending to the plants while
The children played into the afternoon
With undeniable joy.
She is the one looking back
At photos of her team, reminiscing
About the passing times,
But looks forward
To the future ahead.
She is the one who loves him
And lets him go for the best,
But she does not forget the times they share,
Because knowing he is growing without her
Couldn’t make her any happier.
Her whispers reach the open ears who dare to listen, but just like the wind, she vanishes and people wonder whether she was ever there. She searches for the quiet commuters and urges them to look up from their phones, to the outside world and remember past times.
Nostalgia is bittersweet,
Nostalgia is a little hopeful,
Nostalgia is overbearingly loving,
But she doesn’t want to change –
She is okay with who she is.
Nostalgia is always there;
She continues to reach out to the lost
And love them unconditionally
So that one day,
They might say,
"I feel happy today,"
Holding onto that bit of nostalgia, always.
She wonders why they are afraid of her and wraps them in a warm embrace to let them know it is safe. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
She wears the façade of Sadness to wear you down. She understands you are vulnerable, you are not alone. As the days pass by, Nostalgia will always carry on.
By Rachel Chen
we make jiao zhi and you crimp together dough
lick your fingers, soaking the edges
a baptism
while eating guacamole at the same table. it stains
and sticks to the gap between your front teeth
sacrilege, I think
for no reason at all
so I get rid of the feeling
by resolutely stuffing chips
down my throat.