Lis Chi Siegel
Lis Chi Siegel (she/they) is the co-founder and managing editor of sinθ magazine, an international creative arts magazine by and for the Sino diaspora. She was born in San Jose, CA, but now resides in the UK.
Acclimatization—diptych
I. I don’t know where they come from
poem from the lip of my kitchen trash bin with fruit flies
dripping black bag edges with salty oil that fat I couldn’t use from fish cans.
each step says my feet don’t understand the floorboards here yet,
and each move isn’t a new start so much as replanting last year’s seeds,
such hard pupils
however many flights of stairs I have to lug my mattress. in dreams I am
one of the fruit flies. I have my five-roommate-flock, too,
and we don’t trust the red wine and its cling film. we gorge on slick scraps. we spawn on
a whim and patrol in our curious circles. if we were me, we would remember
to take out the trash.
II. Reflexes
I got better
at grabbing them out of the air. Now I find them pressed between my fingers
when they uncurl, smudges smudgier than before.
each new day brings only a few, nothing like an invasion, just waves
of scouting, and with each one I wonder what their reports say. is there some
central nest where they share notes on how I live? perhaps
one marks my home to be spared from a coming pestilence. or,
on fruit fly Yelp, one rates the deliciousness of my drain-catcher, or
leaves a middling comment about the heaping scraps of carrot skins in the bin,
brittle and lifeless, curled like my hair. their bodies like dots
come off my hands easily in the sink.
poem from the lip of my kitchen trash bin with fruit flies
dripping black bag edges with salty oil that fat I couldn’t use from fish cans.
each step says my feet don’t understand the floorboards here yet,
and each move isn’t a new start so much as replanting last year’s seeds,
such hard pupils
however many flights of stairs I have to lug my mattress. in dreams I am
one of the fruit flies. I have my five-roommate-flock, too,
and we don’t trust the red wine and its cling film. we gorge on slick scraps. we spawn on
a whim and patrol in our curious circles. if we were me, we would remember
to take out the trash.
II. Reflexes
I got better
at grabbing them out of the air. Now I find them pressed between my fingers
when they uncurl, smudges smudgier than before.
each new day brings only a few, nothing like an invasion, just waves
of scouting, and with each one I wonder what their reports say. is there some
central nest where they share notes on how I live? perhaps
one marks my home to be spared from a coming pestilence. or,
on fruit fly Yelp, one rates the deliciousness of my drain-catcher, or
leaves a middling comment about the heaping scraps of carrot skins in the bin,
brittle and lifeless, curled like my hair. their bodies like dots
come off my hands easily in the sink.
Commentary
Lis on “Acclimatization—diptych”:
Adults in their twenties — or even just their early twenties — share, I think, a similar amount of transience: we possess a constant feeling of uprooting and moving, and we can never be particularly settled in any one place. One can find joy in that, as I often do, knowing that in a month or a year you will not and cannot be in the same place as you are now; one can also find plenty of exhaustion. I originally wrote this as two separate poems during a strange period of 2021, after a stolen passport and Covid circumstances kept me from returning to my ‘home’ apartment (outside the U.S.) for a span of three months. I stayed in a cramped NYC apartment with two friends, to whom I’m grateful for allowing me to remain for such a longer period than expected. We acutely felt the space’s limiting size, especially as we waited indoors for the days to pass until we were vaccinated. I sat at the same shared, square kitchen table day after day, watching tiny fruit flies circle for hours on end, wondering at where they came from and what could be done about them. I set pointless traps and never came to a conclusion about these flies’ origin (though of all the possible NYC pests to be dealing with, fruit flies felt like a blessing). My time there felt like acclimatization, my having to adapt to these very specific circumstances, and these two poems bookended my stay. It is true that “I got better” by the time I was set to depart — through adaptation both physical and mental — but looking back, it is impossible to say how I truly felt about all those changes after.
General Editor Shon Mapp on “Acclimatization—diptych”:
In "Acclimatization," I was transported into the microcosm of the fruit fly. From the trash bin, the mundane details are imbibed with intimate testimony. The descriptions are almost wistful, with "dripping black bag edges" and "slick scraps." The writer confesses early that "feet don't understand the floorboards here yet," which captures a longing in its vulnerability.
As a humbled observer, the fruit fly carries us into Lis Chi Siegel's world and asks us to ponder the merits of our existence as we "gorge" and "spawn." What I liked most about this diptych is its ability to remind us that in spite of its perceived insignificance, even an insect has the ability to form a flock, take stock of the world, and appraise its beauty. Significance is a matter of perspective and regardless of the arbiter, our lives are both worthy and subject to something greater.
Adults in their twenties — or even just their early twenties — share, I think, a similar amount of transience: we possess a constant feeling of uprooting and moving, and we can never be particularly settled in any one place. One can find joy in that, as I often do, knowing that in a month or a year you will not and cannot be in the same place as you are now; one can also find plenty of exhaustion. I originally wrote this as two separate poems during a strange period of 2021, after a stolen passport and Covid circumstances kept me from returning to my ‘home’ apartment (outside the U.S.) for a span of three months. I stayed in a cramped NYC apartment with two friends, to whom I’m grateful for allowing me to remain for such a longer period than expected. We acutely felt the space’s limiting size, especially as we waited indoors for the days to pass until we were vaccinated. I sat at the same shared, square kitchen table day after day, watching tiny fruit flies circle for hours on end, wondering at where they came from and what could be done about them. I set pointless traps and never came to a conclusion about these flies’ origin (though of all the possible NYC pests to be dealing with, fruit flies felt like a blessing). My time there felt like acclimatization, my having to adapt to these very specific circumstances, and these two poems bookended my stay. It is true that “I got better” by the time I was set to depart — through adaptation both physical and mental — but looking back, it is impossible to say how I truly felt about all those changes after.
General Editor Shon Mapp on “Acclimatization—diptych”:
In "Acclimatization," I was transported into the microcosm of the fruit fly. From the trash bin, the mundane details are imbibed with intimate testimony. The descriptions are almost wistful, with "dripping black bag edges" and "slick scraps." The writer confesses early that "feet don't understand the floorboards here yet," which captures a longing in its vulnerability.
As a humbled observer, the fruit fly carries us into Lis Chi Siegel's world and asks us to ponder the merits of our existence as we "gorge" and "spawn." What I liked most about this diptych is its ability to remind us that in spite of its perceived insignificance, even an insect has the ability to form a flock, take stock of the world, and appraise its beauty. Significance is a matter of perspective and regardless of the arbiter, our lives are both worthy and subject to something greater.
