Poetry: 3 Poems by Kristin Chang
Call these three poems by Kristin Chang brutal. Call them violent, haunting, body-strewn and murderous. But do not deny their anchored beauty and exquisite craft—the heart and family and city laid bare, the poetry besieged by the tragedy of bodies.
How I became fatherless
We leave while he sleeps.
In the slack-mouthed morning, we spit
on the doorhinge to soften its sound.
Every night my father falls
asleep with his hands wringing
the voice out of my throat. A blood-thin song
trickling out of my mouth. I drive
across two states, counting roadkill, recording
my speed in miles
per dead thing.
*
In Nevada, my mother can’t pay
for the motel, so we sleep at the bottom
of the empty swimming pool, hunger
carving our collarbones into deep
bowls. On every table in my father’s house, a bowl
of fruit: dragon’s eyes, red papaya, green
mango. He plunges his thumb into the tender
pulse of a pit, chews for hours. To make the sweetness
last, he said, you must 切开, 吃多. He smiles with rubbled
teeth, cavities clean as bulletholes. Asleep, he’s still as a shot
& skinned animal. I pet his head, each hair black & needle
-thick enough to draw blood. Once, I found
a single honeyed strand. He joked he was dyeing
into a tiger, black & orange, the color
of a bruise forgetting its ache.
*
Some days, every hurt
feels like the first. Today crows
fall out of the sky & the ground stinks
of surrendered flight. Today I tear off
my clothing like scabs, walk naked
in public. In California, my first fatherless
home is infested with beehives
vibrating walls into muscle. Before bed,
I imagine bees laying eggs in my marrow,
waking up as a pool of stung honey. In the house
we left, my father is still
asleep, blanketed in bees.
His body the sweetest feast. I carry him
in my mouth like a fist
of sugar. I suck
until my teeth riot
with rot & I have nothing
left in my mouth to keep
quiet.
Self-help for immigrant women
after Li-Young Lee
If a new name strangles you
soundless, remember dying
is the sound of something
you were born to do.
In your new city, girls
keep disappearing
into their own bodies.
Become one of them: retreat
down your throat
like a drainpipe,
run like sewage
to the sea. Remember
your body is a loan
word, a synonym for swallow
enough salt
to sea yourself.
Stomach the sky
& let it storm
you into nothing
they can forecast. Forget
the city you were
raised to leave
as smoke. Forget
your tongue a hyphen
between silences. Learn
to read by the light of women
flaming on a far coast. Learn
to count: how many crows
to rummage a carcass,
how many men to search
between your legs
for the origin
of ache. When
will you learn whiteness
is never the milk
of a mother
that a man
who hides his hands
is practicing
the width of your neck.
Best to think often
of your mother
as dead. Best
to imagine your birth
killed the woman
& what she named
you. Tonight,
trade your pillow
for a basket of knives.
Don’t dream. If you do,
waking will take
the rest of your life.
What my mother taught me about knives
There are so many ways
to be born. To split
a bone among many
bodies. To fist
a fish out of water,
I punch the sea
til it pores. I shear
a chicken bare as my fist.
In the kitchen, my mother
kneads meat into my shape
tenderizes my tongue
& rubs in silence
like a salt. She teaches me
to kneel for every meal
to let the man
eat first, finish
in you first. Then sop
up the blood, rinse
out your mouth. A bed
is an endless cutting
board. A sink
is where a body floats
when it wants
to be found.
My mother says
men are like knives:
there is no name
for everything they can do.
She teaches me to hold
a knife like a man’s
hand, to teach it
the depth of my body.
She tells me not
to flinch when he hits
bone. My mother
preserves her breasts
in bedside jars, slits her belly
into a knifeblock. Before bed
she teaches me to sharpen
my hand by scraping it
back & forth
between my legs.
By morning, I am hot
metal, my hands whirring
blades. Someday
I will feed my father
to my hands, I will make
meat of men’s minds.
Saliva moating
around my body
like blood
circling
a birth.
Kristin Chang
Kristin Chang lives in NY and reads for Winter Tangerine. She is the recipient of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Rumpus, The Offing, wildness, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook “Past Lives, Future Bodies” is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press (October 2018). She is located at kristinchang.com and on Twitter (@KXinming).
