April I Issue: Poetry Roundup
Each issue we feature pieces of prose and poetry from Asian women, nonbinary, and gender minority writers around the world. Here are this issue’s pieces!
Poems by Audrey Kim
“Rain Child”
The rain comes down and I overflow,
fears and feelings dripping down my skin
like blood flowing from a head wound.
Cloud vapor condenses, precipitates,
penetrates puddles like bullets
as the thunder holds my grief at gunpoint.
I pound the air and atmosphere. I pummel it,
I inhale mutilated oxygen,
and exhale inverted flesh.
I hurt;
I harm myself;
I stand willingly in the rain;
I learn to become an umbrella.
My mother thinks I enjoy the pressure
as if standing at the cliff’s edge means I crave death.
She doesn’t know I do it for survival. Mother,
in breaking myself, I have become unbreakable.
By the time those rejections roll in like high tide
I will have drowned many times already
and will know how to swim.
If I cry
and scream
and feel worthless today,
grief will feel as familiar as a friend
when I fail to get into my dream school.
Please don’t worry about me;
I won’t develop immunity without catching a cold.
So just — let me stand out here, in the rain.
I promise I won’t live here forever.
“Metaphor”
You are an off beat individual
but I move with your motions
like they’ve always been mine.
How I long to unmake you, to pull at your strings
and hold
them in
my hands!
You are a cryptic dream, and would fall apart like one:
Lovely, fleeting, and then far away.
You are the green stretches of the Earth,
the flower garlands of spring, the angel hair I long to braid;
hum low on my neck, coy snakes of the Garden;
I want to sink my teeth into your nature.
You are a caricature of reality,
the prophetic devil on my shoulder I can’t seem to shrug off;
you always urge me to break free of the circles I walk in.
I love your out of tune trumpet of a laugh
and how your too bright eyes catch fire;
The smell of smoke when you speak
poems into your cigarette makes my eyes water;
makes me go absolutely feral.
And as if I could forget
your hazardous smile,
climbing up one corner and
grasping at the edge of the other.
Consider this a testament to how deeply I love you.
Consider these roundabout metaphors
the vessels of your praise.
“Ellipsis”
Twisted beginning... knot of feelings...
in my stomach... bullet proof vest.
My fragile entrails... flinch at your fingers...
stun gun paralysis submission obedience love.
You're tying them... into ribbons...
my liver, my arteries... calling it
pretty... calling it a blood oath...
face pale. But I feel the light.
I am a bird with you. I am Icarus with you.
We are sun bound, sun seeking;
Hot oil seeps from your palm.
Will you... light me... on fire.
The running never stops... and the surprises keep coming,
some good, some bad, some in between.
But as we laid there on the cement,
staring at the sky and pretending to float,
I realized... that I could never... live without you.
And I still —
Each passing day is marked with the quiet scar of absence.
The scars on my body barely bother me.
It’s that feeling of being left behind that stings like a shot.
I never wanted it to end, not even in death.
A forever open ended, a forever possibility,
an eternal red string that doesn’t mean soulmates, but survival.
We were dancing at the edge of a cliff and I didn’t mind
if death, or anyone, was watching, waiting, for the fall.
It’s true, I held my breath around you, but I hope
you’re waiting at the end,
so I can lose it again,
and again... and again... and again.
Poems by Ashley Kim
“Promised Land”
She wakes with nothing short of haste
No rule nor land too tall to breach
Her life a song of conquering
A short-lived thing of catching flame
And though each day is nothing but
a fight to be a lonely light
She wakes each day with far-off dreams
and dares not let her eyes lose sight
“Asymptote/Asystole”
I am tired.
I string air from my lungs,
dig for weeds in a dying garden,
tear my fingernails on soil.
I am drenched in cold life,
sustained on shaking legs,
fueled by a rusting heart.
I lie in bitter warmth of night,
chew at threads of yarn,
chase shadows on the wall.
Yes, I am tired.