TAISHAN
ALICE XU
I. Taishan
Summer maps dragonflies
over her back like a constellation
of cobwebs. Her spine, a calcium landslide,
as she bends over to rope rice stalks
inside her palm. Betta fish snapping
at her chalked calves. Summer inked,
she unravels bone rivets
inside the makeshift, loosening
aches, wishing for forgetfulness
as it begins to rain.
II. Americana
Mother steadies bamboo leaves
stretched across her palm, pours rice
that slips into their pits.
She remembers the sweet taste
of freedom and English tongues,
but her hands bleed China.
Sometimes, I will catch her scraping
her skin as if the mud still lived
whole on her palm, as if the betta fish
still birthed themselves inside her lung.
Summer maps dragonflies
over her back like a constellation
of cobwebs. Her spine, a calcium landslide,
as she bends over to rope rice stalks
inside her palm. Betta fish snapping
at her chalked calves. Summer inked,
she unravels bone rivets
inside the makeshift, loosening
aches, wishing for forgetfulness
as it begins to rain.
II. Americana
Mother steadies bamboo leaves
stretched across her palm, pours rice
that slips into their pits.
She remembers the sweet taste
of freedom and English tongues,
but her hands bleed China.
Sometimes, I will catch her scraping
her skin as if the mud still lived
whole on her palm, as if the betta fish
still birthed themselves inside her lung.
ALICE XU hails from a small town in New Jersey. She reads for The Blueshift Journal and Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, and has served as a Co-Editor in Chief for her high school’s literary magazine and a Genre Editor for Polyphony H.S.
