Abecedarian for an ABC
And this is how I am born: cries shattering the ocean's
borborygmi, marred umbilical cord clipped by migration,
chipped silhouette fading with assimilation as i hold
diaspora in my palms like deadweight, the promised
etchings of a mother tongue atrophied,
filed away between the pages of a navy
gloved passport. In the 1860s the Chinese piled
here in waves, pledged their allegiance with each
iron railed track, foreigners paving America's future,
jagged corpses under every spike. Those left alive
knuckled sweat-slick copper coins indented with
letters held sickly in dynamite-ashed lips. I fist this
measured currency in a squashed Chinatown restaurant,
naked tongue goosebumped with masticated syllables,
oscillating. The waiter waits no longer. Instead, approaches
pity. I want to spare this body from its origins and to be the
quintessential American girl, starved golden and tessellating,
ringed in forgiveness. I gurgle vestiges of a motherland,
shudder eastward along coastlines,
trace hemispheres never mine, pick
under my tarred skin only to find nothing but a
vessel of tangled lies. I sunder this hunger
wrested from empty distances, count platelets like
xylem rings as i search for patriotism or the muddy
Yangtze in my arteries and arrive empty-handed at the
zenith: reaching towards myself only to grasp a stranger.
This poem won third place in the Leonard L. Milberg '53 Poetry Prize and was first published by the administrators of that award.
By Allison Wu
Allison Wu is a high school student from upstate New York. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and Hollins University and can be found or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, The Lunar Journal and londemere lit.
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