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Emma Chan

why i don't write anymore

​simon says an immigrant mother, in slumber, has always wholed
a transiting planet, her limbs a forearm of any shade

but preferably mango. more fish or fruitful than woman.
if my bones are not picked apart from the flesh of motion

sickness they are not worth scattering. the only adjective
i am permitted to deploy to describe my language is broken,

the only plates i am allowed to pray to ocean-opening
air looms. yes, there is skin between my skin and listening

within my ears and maybe museums in my cupboards that hurt
like it did when we scraped our backs with phoenix

feathers during our fall from myth. yes: i, like all the birds
before me, stand heir to a land vast and riveted by rivers

with exotic names like a family pronounced she and exotic words filled with inside of a chest
that is also fruit, hanging like hopeful melons for hire. my name remains

on the edge of a qipao sleeve: a surprise on my shoulders. man, do a people love
surprises. and under our sun so sparing and silent

it does not know to subtract the weight of breath
from the chokehold of a equal signed

story, i am an infinite flying daughter in love with sons so gorged
on duck liver and boar heart and cat tongue and human home

you could milk us like dusk and we’d still drip culture. crippling. yes, a tongue
swallowed by a row of throats is so eternal
​
that even Confucius’s thoughts could not touch
my poems. our galaxies. yes, because i says. they would not dare.

Biography

Emma Chan (she/her) is a junior at Kent Place School. She is the founder of a mental health publication called The Hearth (https://www.thehearthstories.org/). She hopes to pursue history, philosophy, and literature in college.  Her work has appeared in Blue Marble Review and Eunoia Review.
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  • Home
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  • Issues
    • Issue 49
    • Issue 48
    • Issue 47
    • Issue 46
    • Issue 45
    • Issue 44
    • Issue 43
    • Issue 42
    • Issue 41
    • Issue 40
    • Issue 39
    • Issue 38
    • Issue 37
    • Issue 36
    • Issue 35
    • Issue 34
    • Issue 33
    • Issue 32
    • Issue 31
    • Issue 30
    • Issue 29
    • Issue 28
    • Issue 27
    • Issue 26
    • Issue 25
    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 1
  • Submissions