POETRY
Katie Mansfield, Vivian Guo, Krysta Lee Frost, Emily Chang, Nikita Bhardwaj, Angela Ming Yang
Katie Mansfield, Vivian Guo, Krysta Lee Frost, Emily Chang, Nikita Bhardwaj, Angela Ming Yang
Refugeography
Katie Mansfield
How all my goodbyes are named after rivers:
Mekong, San Antonio, Rio Grande. An ocean ago,
my family fled south. Or, depending on where you choose
to mark history, I was always born here,
sweating, freckled. My mother’s Vietnamese
never got past the eighth grade. My father’s Spanish
gets us to the metro. On vacation, I am the only one
who reads the signs navigating to the museum.
It makes me unbearable, transcribing an entire landscape
and still coming up short when asked about home.
Sometimes I wake and think: I will be terrifying to love.
Jagged borderlines. An open wound demanding territory,
a country to call its own. For a second there,
you looked at me and I raised a flag in your name.
I touched you and thought of cities, burning.
Katie Mansfield
How all my goodbyes are named after rivers:
Mekong, San Antonio, Rio Grande. An ocean ago,
my family fled south. Or, depending on where you choose
to mark history, I was always born here,
sweating, freckled. My mother’s Vietnamese
never got past the eighth grade. My father’s Spanish
gets us to the metro. On vacation, I am the only one
who reads the signs navigating to the museum.
It makes me unbearable, transcribing an entire landscape
and still coming up short when asked about home.
Sometimes I wake and think: I will be terrifying to love.
Jagged borderlines. An open wound demanding territory,
a country to call its own. For a second there,
you looked at me and I raised a flag in your name.
I touched you and thought of cities, burning.
Red
Vivian Guo
On Chinese New Year, Mama
Dabs my face with blush,
Clips my hair,
And helps me zip up my red qipao.
“Red is very lucky," she reminds me.
When I was born, Mama
Wove red strings into my body,
We share the same birthday!
She says it connects us.
Now, I cut strings at midnight.
People-pleasing is my talent, so Mama
gives me practice math problems
Her red pen grades 100 - “perfect!”
I doodled smiley faces next to it.
Mama likes to cook braised pork
“Hong shao rou," red roasted meat
I eat it in between laughs at its literal translation.
Mama ignores me,
She says pork makes me taller
I am 5’ 2’’.
Mama enters my room
Sets a plate of cut strawberries on my desk
“A study snack,” she reassures.
She scurries out
I bite one
They’re sour
Not as much as all the red ink
On the test paper I hid, right as she came in.
The maple tree at the end of the street,
a brilliant red,
Mama’s favorite. But I -
I shed gold medals with every gust of wind
Green ribbons of stress fly
Even as the burning embers scatter
I hope Mama comes back to me.
Vivian Guo
On Chinese New Year, Mama
Dabs my face with blush,
Clips my hair,
And helps me zip up my red qipao.
“Red is very lucky," she reminds me.
When I was born, Mama
Wove red strings into my body,
We share the same birthday!
She says it connects us.
Now, I cut strings at midnight.
People-pleasing is my talent, so Mama
gives me practice math problems
Her red pen grades 100 - “perfect!”
I doodled smiley faces next to it.
Mama likes to cook braised pork
“Hong shao rou," red roasted meat
I eat it in between laughs at its literal translation.
Mama ignores me,
She says pork makes me taller
I am 5’ 2’’.
Mama enters my room
Sets a plate of cut strawberries on my desk
“A study snack,” she reassures.
She scurries out
I bite one
They’re sour
Not as much as all the red ink
On the test paper I hid, right as she came in.
The maple tree at the end of the street,
a brilliant red,
Mama’s favorite. But I -
I shed gold medals with every gust of wind
Green ribbons of stress fly
Even as the burning embers scatter
I hope Mama comes back to me.
Speak Yourself
Vivian Guo
My teacher invites Mama to school one day,
“Remedial” and “illiteracy” pass overhead.
Mama keeps up the conversation, just barely
It’s a while before I hear chinese again.
My white classmates spend afternoons with parents
They speak the suburban of starbucks and golf,
Mama drills kumon with me,
Weekends are short stories told in heavy accents.
Chinese fades into an echo,
Characters escape the tip of my tongue, but I can taste the faint...
What’s the word again?
When I realize my mother tongue has left
I wonder, will english take its place?
It doesn’t.
My sentences are wrong verb tenses
Every word is mispronounced
Classmates shift in their seats, exchanging
Cruel glances and paper-thin lips.
My eyes sting.
So Mama hugs me at home.
She doesn’t repair my fragile feelings,
Instead, she sweeps my broken shards
Under the bed.
Mama’s expression is cracked porcelain
She says nothing
I wonder, is it the chinese that’s broken,
Or the english?
The white kids around me throw out “ily” and “luv u”
Indiscriminately
What’s it like to curve your lips around those words?
I tried to say those eight letters,
First to my mom,
But these pigeon words get lost in the wind.
Silence is our status quo
Like decorative wallpaper,
Mama in her room and me in mine
Not wanting to de-crease myself
Into origami of a thousand paper cranes
Promises unspoken.
Vivian Guo
My teacher invites Mama to school one day,
“Remedial” and “illiteracy” pass overhead.
Mama keeps up the conversation, just barely
It’s a while before I hear chinese again.
My white classmates spend afternoons with parents
They speak the suburban of starbucks and golf,
Mama drills kumon with me,
Weekends are short stories told in heavy accents.
Chinese fades into an echo,
Characters escape the tip of my tongue, but I can taste the faint...
What’s the word again?
When I realize my mother tongue has left
I wonder, will english take its place?
It doesn’t.
My sentences are wrong verb tenses
Every word is mispronounced
Classmates shift in their seats, exchanging
Cruel glances and paper-thin lips.
My eyes sting.
So Mama hugs me at home.
She doesn’t repair my fragile feelings,
Instead, she sweeps my broken shards
Under the bed.
Mama’s expression is cracked porcelain
She says nothing
I wonder, is it the chinese that’s broken,
Or the english?
The white kids around me throw out “ily” and “luv u”
Indiscriminately
What’s it like to curve your lips around those words?
I tried to say those eight letters,
First to my mom,
But these pigeon words get lost in the wind.
Silence is our status quo
Like decorative wallpaper,
Mama in her room and me in mine
Not wanting to de-crease myself
Into origami of a thousand paper cranes
Promises unspoken.
ReturnRerun
Angela Ming Yang
In this house I rush
to reincarnate in
secret
folding backwards
to who I was
when I
left
prodigal daughter learning
the only way
to return
is to
crawl.
I wonder how many porchlights
burned out in my absence
and how many moths
burned out in those
porchlights
Did you find their silver bodies in the morning
— cooked mid-writhe, headed home
to moonlight they’d never
reach?
I am infinity doll, wound to wander outward
till a dead end catches me.
Butterfly kiss of curb on shins, rollerskates
flinging too fast down the street,
beyond which are doors
without rooms
and windows
without walls.
Angela Ming Yang
In this house I rush
to reincarnate in
secret
folding backwards
to who I was
when I
left
prodigal daughter learning
the only way
to return
is to
crawl.
I wonder how many porchlights
burned out in my absence
and how many moths
burned out in those
porchlights
Did you find their silver bodies in the morning
— cooked mid-writhe, headed home
to moonlight they’d never
reach?
I am infinity doll, wound to wander outward
till a dead end catches me.
Butterfly kiss of curb on shins, rollerskates
flinging too fast down the street,
beyond which are doors
without rooms
and windows
without walls.
Self-Assessment
Krysta Lee Frost
Choose an image
Please check the box
That best describes your symptoms
From 1 to 5
How often is a mood a tidal force
How well does this sentence describe you
I need to be punished
Holds the tongue hostage
But often do you curl into its knife edge
Other times, none of the above
The claustrophobic as a checkbox
Fluorescent doctor’s office where
I’m tender as an apology
For someone I’ve forgotten
From 1 to 5 how terrified
Am I of being abandoned
Again it’s easier to recover
From what you’ve wrecked yourself
So I’ve rewired my devices
Treatment can help people understand
Their compulsions: I look at
My hands and cannot recognize
Reduced feelings of helplessness
The recurring thoughts of imperfection
Yes or no can you relate
To this scenario not looking
Anymore in the mirror for fear
After all is said and done
Of how it animates your mouth
In the end what other names have you called out
Have you been promiscuous
Survived on mimicry
Gone hungry or exercised an injury
If yes how long
Have you felt this way
If yes intentionally or on purpose
Krysta Lee Frost
Choose an image
Please check the box
That best describes your symptoms
From 1 to 5
How often is a mood a tidal force
How well does this sentence describe you
I need to be punished
Holds the tongue hostage
But often do you curl into its knife edge
Other times, none of the above
The claustrophobic as a checkbox
Fluorescent doctor’s office where
I’m tender as an apology
For someone I’ve forgotten
From 1 to 5 how terrified
Am I of being abandoned
Again it’s easier to recover
From what you’ve wrecked yourself
So I’ve rewired my devices
Treatment can help people understand
Their compulsions: I look at
My hands and cannot recognize
Reduced feelings of helplessness
The recurring thoughts of imperfection
Yes or no can you relate
To this scenario not looking
Anymore in the mirror for fear
After all is said and done
Of how it animates your mouth
In the end what other names have you called out
Have you been promiscuous
Survived on mimicry
Gone hungry or exercised an injury
If yes how long
Have you felt this way
If yes intentionally or on purpose
We Had a Good Run
Krysta Lee Frost
I practiced the phrase. Envisioned
the scene. Nursed the words
like new molars against the tongue,
primed for the pull you beat me to.
But it wasn’t a run—you walked
a leisurely pace. I dragged on
behind you. Kicking and screaming
to an invisible beat, pulled by a leash
I clipped on myself.
I made noise. Bore teeth
and fists. Fissured and banged.
I threw myself around.
I made you hear me.
It’s like this: there are days
when my whole body is a howl
housed tight in the throat
Ready for the hands
to snuff it all out.
Krysta Lee Frost
I practiced the phrase. Envisioned
the scene. Nursed the words
like new molars against the tongue,
primed for the pull you beat me to.
But it wasn’t a run—you walked
a leisurely pace. I dragged on
behind you. Kicking and screaming
to an invisible beat, pulled by a leash
I clipped on myself.
I made noise. Bore teeth
and fists. Fissured and banged.
I threw myself around.
I made you hear me.
It’s like this: there are days
when my whole body is a howl
housed tight in the throat
Ready for the hands
to snuff it all out.
Curse
Krysta Lee Frost
My mother is most beautiful
when she is dancing.
And so she never taught me.
Krysta Lee Frost
My mother is most beautiful
when she is dancing.
And so she never taught me.
I Am Trying to Tell A Story
Krysta Lee Frost
I am trying to find a way to say I don’t like my face but it’s as simple as not liking my face. It is
difficult to say this in front of my parents, who do not look like me but feel offended anyway.
/
Reflecting itself, my being deepens its breath, redirects. How
/
often it is I don’t want to see, so I cover the mirrors with blankets.
/
This keeps me from wanting to split open
/
my face.
/
I’m sorry, this story is trying to be about me.
/
They say I have my mother’s face on my father’s bones but all I see is a face.
/
“Anong lahi mo?” The cashier asks what my ethnicity is and it is difficult not to answer him for I
have taught to be polite and flatten my history for all to see. Here,
/
the map of me.
/
My mother’s voice soothing my nerves—they’re curious because I’m pretty. How this wouldn’t
happen in America but I still don’t want to move there. I am not special in America, she says, where
everyone is beautiful.
/
When they ask for my name, mestiza precedes whatever I’ll say. Does it matter what I call myself in
front of history that knows what I am? Coining its own term for me, as beautiful as new currency.
/
My name: a hum of violence on the tongue.
/
To be a mestiza is to see yourself nowhere except TV, where another tisay professes her love for
what’s local. Her face parading its foreign origins as what’s only natural
/
disaster. With the smile more beautiful than the stretch of my whole body, our country a birthmark
we’ve been taught to hide.
/
If I was born for anything, it’s to hawk whitening lotion, the advertisement conveniently embedded
in my skin, walking postcolonial billboard that I am.
/
They think I am beautiful for what I am not, that being: here, here being home, home being where
you hang your face and grow into the exhale of your body.
/
I am trying to say I don’t like my face in a way that conveys grief. That in his last days, my lolo asked
without words, fear in his eyes, what a white lady was doing in the kitchen.
/
It is easier to be surprised than disappointed, so I rearrange myself in my mind. Maybe today: my
father’s eyes and mother’s nose. My father’s ears. The curve of my mother’s mouth. The daughters I
could have become, had the mixed bag been more generous.
/
What difference does it make. I am the tragedy that I am.
/
See for yourself: my twisted heritage. How my mouth warps me American, no matter what language
I speak.
/
I’m sorry, this story is still learning to be about me.
Krysta Lee Frost
I am trying to find a way to say I don’t like my face but it’s as simple as not liking my face. It is
difficult to say this in front of my parents, who do not look like me but feel offended anyway.
/
Reflecting itself, my being deepens its breath, redirects. How
/
often it is I don’t want to see, so I cover the mirrors with blankets.
/
This keeps me from wanting to split open
/
my face.
/
I’m sorry, this story is trying to be about me.
/
They say I have my mother’s face on my father’s bones but all I see is a face.
/
“Anong lahi mo?” The cashier asks what my ethnicity is and it is difficult not to answer him for I
have taught to be polite and flatten my history for all to see. Here,
/
the map of me.
/
My mother’s voice soothing my nerves—they’re curious because I’m pretty. How this wouldn’t
happen in America but I still don’t want to move there. I am not special in America, she says, where
everyone is beautiful.
/
When they ask for my name, mestiza precedes whatever I’ll say. Does it matter what I call myself in
front of history that knows what I am? Coining its own term for me, as beautiful as new currency.
/
My name: a hum of violence on the tongue.
/
To be a mestiza is to see yourself nowhere except TV, where another tisay professes her love for
what’s local. Her face parading its foreign origins as what’s only natural
/
disaster. With the smile more beautiful than the stretch of my whole body, our country a birthmark
we’ve been taught to hide.
/
If I was born for anything, it’s to hawk whitening lotion, the advertisement conveniently embedded
in my skin, walking postcolonial billboard that I am.
/
They think I am beautiful for what I am not, that being: here, here being home, home being where
you hang your face and grow into the exhale of your body.
/
I am trying to say I don’t like my face in a way that conveys grief. That in his last days, my lolo asked
without words, fear in his eyes, what a white lady was doing in the kitchen.
/
It is easier to be surprised than disappointed, so I rearrange myself in my mind. Maybe today: my
father’s eyes and mother’s nose. My father’s ears. The curve of my mother’s mouth. The daughters I
could have become, had the mixed bag been more generous.
/
What difference does it make. I am the tragedy that I am.
/
See for yourself: my twisted heritage. How my mouth warps me American, no matter what language
I speak.
/
I’m sorry, this story is still learning to be about me.
Defense Mechanism
Krysta Lee Frost
When the day comes and I sever
the hands before they slip,
before I blade you out clean
and bathe away the cut,
allow me one thing: let me
keep this image of you,
back hinged, ribboning
smoke out my window.
Let me mourn the way
you let the light flood in
and how, by habit, I shut
my eyes when darkness split.
Krysta Lee Frost
When the day comes and I sever
the hands before they slip,
before I blade you out clean
and bathe away the cut,
allow me one thing: let me
keep this image of you,
back hinged, ribboning
smoke out my window.
Let me mourn the way
you let the light flood in
and how, by habit, I shut
my eyes when darkness split.
warcry
Nikita Bhardwaj
my father is a gambling man;
he rolls dice and my mama rolls out dough
and together they scream like the drones in the sky
are sinking kisses in the shoreline, furrows in earth like
crescents in my skin, mamas grip unyielding.
they say that the mountains are alive and stumbling
through our house. that we live to die, live to
knife uranium into the veins of nonbelievers.
at school my brother learns to shoot
for the stars, tear white from bone, and
I braid tripwire into my hair. day breaks
like flickering candle; this is why
my father folds cards as the
men from another sun fold us
into paper planes. we fly high and sing lullabies
with hell-raisers, knowing silence
after strike means the village is asleep,
so pray to the god with no name.
scream war. spit revenge. because
I can’t see the stars anymore.
Nikita Bhardwaj
my father is a gambling man;
he rolls dice and my mama rolls out dough
and together they scream like the drones in the sky
are sinking kisses in the shoreline, furrows in earth like
crescents in my skin, mamas grip unyielding.
they say that the mountains are alive and stumbling
through our house. that we live to die, live to
knife uranium into the veins of nonbelievers.
at school my brother learns to shoot
for the stars, tear white from bone, and
I braid tripwire into my hair. day breaks
like flickering candle; this is why
my father folds cards as the
men from another sun fold us
into paper planes. we fly high and sing lullabies
with hell-raisers, knowing silence
after strike means the village is asleep,
so pray to the god with no name.
scream war. spit revenge. because
I can’t see the stars anymore.
hereditary asphyxiation
Nikita Bhardwaj
my mother eats with her hands,
turmeric ribbons winding down her arms to
pool in the crook between
hushed saccharine prayers
and silver towers borne against asphalt.
she was eight when her father told her
to breathe in the ashes of time, to swallow
the yellow hymnal music, to
shatter the profane and spare the sacred.
I never understood why my mother crushed
black cumin seeds between her palms or let
tamarind juice seep from her eyelids,
until she unwound her ribbons and
pulled them taut around my neck.
I choke on cinders, rasping dialects
and clawing crooked ancestral lines.
the blood on my hands is my own.
Nikita Bhardwaj
my mother eats with her hands,
turmeric ribbons winding down her arms to
pool in the crook between
hushed saccharine prayers
and silver towers borne against asphalt.
she was eight when her father told her
to breathe in the ashes of time, to swallow
the yellow hymnal music, to
shatter the profane and spare the sacred.
I never understood why my mother crushed
black cumin seeds between her palms or let
tamarind juice seep from her eyelids,
until she unwound her ribbons and
pulled them taut around my neck.
I choke on cinders, rasping dialects
and clawing crooked ancestral lines.
the blood on my hands is my own.
walks on the beach
Emily Chang
i tread the path
i’m treading water
imagining you lapping at my feet
like waves on the shore
you know i want more
than just a taste of what’s to come
tell me i’m not the problem
i didn’t mean to act like I was casting a line
when i’m the true fish out of water
are you too high to recognize
that i’m breaking the shell of my uncertainty
your tongue coated in candy
the amusement and scorn glittering in your eyes
is the perfect poison for me to crash and burn
still green but i’m quick to learn
eager to dive and explore what i’ve only dipped my toes into
crooning sirens reel me in and the loudest one is you
so don’t you dare abandon me
don’t let go of me with the fingers that tied my blindfold, cuffed me to a stone
i’ve cried oceans; i don’t want to face this murkiness alone
i want the sand beneath my back
i wish for waves to caress my skin
sweeping me into new realms
drowning me in seas i’d barely skimmed before
i’m paralyzed
momentarily electrified until saltwater fills my lungs
and my specter sinks into a watery tomb
the cries are replaced by a sudden silence
gentle calm of nothing
the beatings are replaced by a sudden darkness
sweet embrace of nothing
before, i’d burst into tears
as screams jolted my ears
but now i return to the lull from where i came
lips blue and frozen
never again to speak my name
disintegrating, my soul is scattered
into where we are all the same
Emily Chang
i tread the path
i’m treading water
imagining you lapping at my feet
like waves on the shore
you know i want more
than just a taste of what’s to come
tell me i’m not the problem
i didn’t mean to act like I was casting a line
when i’m the true fish out of water
are you too high to recognize
that i’m breaking the shell of my uncertainty
your tongue coated in candy
the amusement and scorn glittering in your eyes
is the perfect poison for me to crash and burn
still green but i’m quick to learn
eager to dive and explore what i’ve only dipped my toes into
crooning sirens reel me in and the loudest one is you
so don’t you dare abandon me
don’t let go of me with the fingers that tied my blindfold, cuffed me to a stone
i’ve cried oceans; i don’t want to face this murkiness alone
i want the sand beneath my back
i wish for waves to caress my skin
sweeping me into new realms
drowning me in seas i’d barely skimmed before
i’m paralyzed
momentarily electrified until saltwater fills my lungs
and my specter sinks into a watery tomb
the cries are replaced by a sudden silence
gentle calm of nothing
the beatings are replaced by a sudden darkness
sweet embrace of nothing
before, i’d burst into tears
as screams jolted my ears
but now i return to the lull from where i came
lips blue and frozen
never again to speak my name
disintegrating, my soul is scattered
into where we are all the same