November 2023

your ancestry is immortalized in a silver bullet. cut
the rotting carcass of your mother tongue & seal yourself

into an empty promise. a silent bid for your grandchildren: ripen the
soles of your callused feet, hide your footprints so that they won’t

tell you to go back to your country. erasure comes in many forms: the tail end of a nebula, the purposeful censorship, the fatigue. when

you first arrived in this country, you told me about the golden arches  hanging
like effigies in a stolen sky. you listened to swan lake on the radio because it

was the only english song you knew, threw your body into the depths of
the hudson to shred your sanguine wings. to be american is to fold

your body into a sacred song, to be a martyr plastered on front-page headlines, beloved for your sacrifice in the name of patriotism.

when your corpse is buried, you are only remembered by your
four grandchildren: one for each year you lost in service to this

battered country. they nail your obituary to the ginkgo tree in
your garden. outside, a lone dove sings into the night.

 

Grace Zhang (she/her) is a poet and student from the United States. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance of Young Artists & Writers and the Live Poets Society of New Jersey. She is an editor for Polyphony Lit and editor-in-chief of The Lunar Journal. When she’s not writing, she enjoys making new playlists on Spotify, grape hi-chews, and mystery novels.

At parting, our questions mirrored each other:
Where are you going?

You said that we met too late in life.
But I protest; these circumstances

May prostrate at our feet.
Like Nizar Qabbani, I too

Name you my country, dictionaries
Flinging themselves to sea

To hear your greeting,
Each Arabic syllable unraveling

To caress your exhaled breath.
The difference between our words

Is only a small diacritic.
On the page, we are still together,

Stringing verses into song,
Guided by the sway of Beirut breeze,

Your palms upturned
As if in prayer. And in memory,

The dusk folds and collapses
Against the heat of a slow gaze;

My fingers lingering on your brow.
Even now,

I can take short breaths
And still smell the sweetness.

 

Jessica is a poet from Shanghai. She loves art, music, and Arabic poetry.