time unmade the dense of me, undressed me a
silk-spun mutable. in another orphaned alley, i dropped
my grandmother’s vase on the jaundiced ground, so the
vendors took me for a poor child, sold me duck tongue &
bear bile for free. said make this your own, shoved a curdled
strip into my unwashed hands, said you want to eat don’t you
hungry thing in knotted hemiola, raked of rhythm. i affirmed the
affliction, put the cacked flesh to my lips, its pronged end
glistening porcelain, making a sentenceless host of my grainy|
skins. hungry do not die hungry do not die i parted my mouth
like a sea — pretended to unname everything, savored the slow
flaying of my twin corpse, the strike of its slow-roast shaft. in the bad
manners i’ve relearned i tried to whisper, my piecemeal mouth full of bones.
nothing came out.,
⽔
when i was young, mama told me that everyone had a relationship
with the ocean. so she prayed alone in proverb, rippled abba between
soothsayer teeth, left me chewing cardboard & plastic in the living room. waif
like an animal corpse. so she welled marah & elim for new salvation, that i,
might take the dissonance of mopeds for birdsongs. on rainy days like this i
smear pizza grease on yellow shirts, print the crimson splatter like a dying in
me. drench it in saltless tears. here lies the polyester nation, its tag carving
forgotten promise. here i’ve learned to mechanize product, sever the hands that
made it. when i fought with pink-faced boys, silt became my blood, heritage my
hymnal. called it cleansing at day. annihilation at night. tear by tear the veiled
moon swallows stars’ almond eyes, wordless. i foam envy for fishnets as mouths in my dinghy,
gnawing on my desecrated carbonate shell, the tides metastatic. at home i set fire to the monolid
cancer, drain my skins of their shrapneled silence. wordless.
⽔
this is where the boys turned red, they said. mountain by mountain, they wove through the bony forest, choked & porous, their molotov gazes abandoning. i stick my lips to history’s wet bosom & sour its condensed milk, splash it against my palate in an ebbless flow. at the museum my father points to a picture of his grandfather, says he was one of them. says it like an untaken prize. all i can see is a boy without a home, i say. don’t you understand china was his the nation was his belonging he pierces syllables like bayonets in monochrome montage, makes the country all a man owned. these days he doesn’t realize that the world goes the other way around, drowning him undead unlit sunless everything wells inside him — the telephone siphons his verb & adjective, strangles consonants midair, their bounds amorphous. but yes i silent i a good son bring honor to my family he clasps his canon m5, makes an angel of the godless soldier, & i cannot help but picture its mouths as open wounds boring bright holes
through my sticky chest.
⽔
good evening kiss. under streetlamps boys run wide-mouthed, bend over azaleas, their stomachs rubbery & stagnant. father lets me lead our way back to the apartment building, tells me this is home your home my home no not was it is so i try to be quiet, burrow my tongue in its wet-marketed exigencies, pocket it like a mother of pearl beneath the monotone
beating summer’s garlic breath still flutters still spits still
begets me in its bloodborne language blows its kiss raw & angular thrashes like a
latent riptide, throttles me unfleshed unspun
unfinished
— but in my butterfly cityscape the ocean
remains moonless, splits wounds out of
ochre skies, draws dust & dew from the
great gash of heaven where another warrior
brandishes his fiery sword, arrives at the nameless
hour, takes penance for poverty, poverty for hunger, calls
me his own son sunless son
red guard son temple-tethered son sick son temple dental —
& the barefoot boys still cartwheel in their baby-shadows, teething
heaven’s blameless tears like little whetstones, making mirrors of
their lanugo eyes
sea by sea
wave by wave
never knowing how to say goodbye.
Jeffrey Xu recently discovered his passion for creative writing. When he isn’t busily typing away on a Google Doc, he can be found playing the piano or devouring chocolate. He is the founder of The Catalitic Journal and attends Livingston High School in New Jersey. He loves exploring and promoting the interdisciplinary connection between S.T.E.M. and the humanities!