Poetry: Spring Rituals by Stephanie Isan
In “Spring Ritual”, the speaker negotiates themselves amidst the rituals of renewal, loss, migration and spirituality. The speaker is governed by a sense of wonder which is further exemplified by a rich menagerie of sounds and vivid imagery.
Spring Rituals
Will it, again, ever be as sweet as the night market,
noxious fumes and pig’s blood, shaved ice
melting into the drains – will it ever
again, be as sweet as fairy lights
sparking our flesh in the dusk of a typhoon
summer, fireflies crisping our palms
with butane. Tonight, for you,
I light incense in closet altars. Sexuality
becoming tendrils of prayers. We all beg
forgiveness. There once was a filial daughter who
kowtowed for three nights straight, her forehead a
hammer nailing coffins into temple
cement. Isn’t that enough. Isn’t it good enough? I am
neither here nor there, fragile hip bones
jutting like clipped
wings. I blossomed, feathered, from a branch of your rib. You called
me beautiful. Would be perfect. For you, I have salted my
lands and burned all my
tongues and pleaded one day you would deem it piety. Tell me,
when you crossed the
Pacific, eyes wide as any womb,
barren as any grave, and found nothing but the
ashes of unswept tombs, flat Cokes bubbling with the
rotten rancor of mandarin peels, what did you see? See what? The maggots,
writhing, in
whiteness.
Stephanie Isan
Stephanie Isan (she/they) is a queer, Taiwanese American writer, poet, and software engineer. She was born and raised in the San Francisco bay area, and currently lives on the US east coast with her dog, two cats, and partner.
