CHANG'E DREAMS OF SLEEP
KATHERINE LIU
I wake one morning to find you dead, numbed
by your student’s deft red-tailed arrow. News
reaches fast, even to the rabbit pounding elixir
beside me; even to me, long-haired and haunting
for lack of things to say: I am a crater, concave
and spoon-fitted. You could bite cakes out of me.
Often I dreamed of touching you, hand running
your forearm, your hip a crescent near my cheek –
but you are dumb and mortal as they come.
When you shot down nine suns, did you foresee this
life of ruin: the moon serving as my ribbed mausoleum
and the last sun now your self-immolating palace?
So much for eternity, so much for meeting someday.
At least on earth people remember me –
even if only to muse over human blessings, lost
love, the moon’s puckered beauty. Every Midautumn
festival, my name beside platters, feast, red-lantern
prayers, over slick river snails and sliced duck
and the gentle clinking of tin. But there’s nothing
immortal like memory. The moon waxes tonight:
I say bite me and they do, teeth sinking into moon
cakes, my womb birthed as a full yolk, the swimming
emblem of my grief.
by your student’s deft red-tailed arrow. News
reaches fast, even to the rabbit pounding elixir
beside me; even to me, long-haired and haunting
for lack of things to say: I am a crater, concave
and spoon-fitted. You could bite cakes out of me.
Often I dreamed of touching you, hand running
your forearm, your hip a crescent near my cheek –
but you are dumb and mortal as they come.
When you shot down nine suns, did you foresee this
life of ruin: the moon serving as my ribbed mausoleum
and the last sun now your self-immolating palace?
So much for eternity, so much for meeting someday.
At least on earth people remember me –
even if only to muse over human blessings, lost
love, the moon’s puckered beauty. Every Midautumn
festival, my name beside platters, feast, red-lantern
prayers, over slick river snails and sliced duck
and the gentle clinking of tin. But there’s nothing
immortal like memory. The moon waxes tonight:
I say bite me and they do, teeth sinking into moon
cakes, my womb birthed as a full yolk, the swimming
emblem of my grief.
IMMIGRANT HAIBUN
KATHERINE LIU
So let’s be comfortable. Let’s eat. Let’s bite curtains. And throw old socks away. Let’s pull the covers and dream. How we like that. How we like the rest of that. The houses, meter square of desk space. Let’s claim. Let’s prune rotted trees. Push back orange flowers and vines. Until we catch. Until the gong strikes. Let’s forget. Let’s down the mallets like pills. Let’s wrap around all the bells. How they tine, how they toll to our pulse beats. How we wish for someone who eases the punch out of nothing. Who parades his eyelashes with snow. Who presses peonies in his sleep. Who lets us dig. So let’s dig. Through our knees, the husked tissue sheds. Our stalks snap spring. They bow up from untilled land.
The wildflowers lean:
Their white heads toward the distance,
Their roots stopped in dirt.
The wildflowers lean:
Their white heads toward the distance,
Their roots stopped in dirt.
KATHERINE LIU attends Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois. Her poetry appears in BOAAT, Red Paint Hill, and Alexandria Quarterly, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.
