On eveningsBy Michelle Li
Forget narrow shouldered
evenings of cedar flecked grasses, the watercolored apricot sky thinning in the background: I was told all poetry comes from discomfort, so I sat down on the driveway and thought about dying. In this version of life, all I have ever wanted is for people to love me. For this poem to tell me: you look beautiful under this light, sadness and all. You look beautiful under this light; sit down, whatever it is—it will wait. You will be good, despite despite despite*. On the open driveway, I fretted myself uneven, thought about how my grandmother gutted freshwater salmon after dinner time. How I was so young to know that something stilled can hurt the living, how father told me that all poetry was selfish: to live with a harsh need for tenderness, to be razed clean by understanding. You will not survive long in this world. When grandmother left to sharpen her knives, I peered into the red innards, the severed fish fins, the bloodshot eyes, and saw my dusk-bitten face. I pushed my sadness through the mesh of language only to arrive back in my body. No poem belonged to me anyway. Outside, the sky turned tawny, then a darker shade of apricot. *"Despite despite despite" is from a poem by Chen Chen
On ChildhoodBy Michelle Li
That autumn in the second grade, I wore my red flannel jacket.
A piece of morning sun slouched over the smooth vertebrae of skyline and Dad dropped me by the elementary school gates—his figure swallowed by the shadow of trees, his frame shrinking under the lilt of a fresh season. Let me tell you what I mean: I had a dream I was a young girl again and I was hurt. The dawn was swollen. It is bright in my mind; some things will cut you to the core and the light is one of them. Now, late at night, I still have not learned to control my wounds, to stop the bleeding. My father’s anger, parsimoniously shown, has brought me back to childhood. There was the boy who approached him, sir, your daughter: uncouth, violent—used her fists instead of her pretty _____. We were both lanky and small; I cannot say Father was wrong to have scolded me, I cannot say the boy was wrong either. *
But childhood: a scab torn off too early. Hands throbbing
under the slat of a ruler: wounded, singing birds. You look up at the kitchen lights, a hollow chest warms with bubbling spit. That night was a Wednesday evening. I’m making everything of you, he said. *
Childhood: I wanted to believe that you could keep things alive
if you showed them beauty. Father, love me--your pretty, violent child. I was told that everything beautiful must have been sharp at first, and this is how you reduce a body to its beginnings. Who will understand my hurt, then? How do you fix the body and everything else you cannot define? How is a child supposed to feel after ruin? How is a lifetime supposed to go on after childhood? The church said god but my father said sorry. There is sadness on both sides of the coin but I remember the second grade and the rust horizon. I sat at the edge of everything and cried loudly. Any small meaning has eluded me countless times and hurt me since. I bruise easily, like fresh peaches dusted with morning dew, fleshy centers raw. There are so many beautiful things and I am not a single one of them. There is so much beautiful language and you can never use all of it. Violent child. Pretty, pretty child. I don’t know anything, but I have to live my life. Poor, poor child. Go home, child, go home. Michelle Li has been nationally recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, Bennington Young Writers Awards, and Apprentice Writer. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writer's Workshop and her work is forthcoming or published in Aster Lit, wildscape. literary, and Third Wednesday. She edits for The Dawn Review and is executive editor of Hominum Journal. She plays violin and piano, loves Rachmaninoff and blackberries.
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