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.
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.
