Dear Mother Dear Friend:
I don’t even know who you are.
Not knowing is a substitute for any story we can tell.
What is the condition of body. What body. Windows bent to tilt, facing out. The interior lacks light but we need to draw it in. The sky it mirrors. What do you see. The sun goes up the sun goes down. I can’t pretend you never saw my face. I used to search for arrows, gather them for you, in case you needed them. You told me better than being alive was living through you. You didn’t want to live but didn’t want anybody else to, so you liked reminding me.
I am afraid to say house because walls are implied. Often running without knowing where we come from, where we’ll go. Some matters are left behind. I told you you’re right, erase my mark, and the house doesn’t hold.
dear lover:
within range there is only skin on skin in bed your skin is a sort of
tent of underneath a small heap in the morning
underneath the body is trained a still kind of war underneath the swim
no waves on the surface nothing lies beneath
you say you don’t know you are taught to be comfortable
low to the ground nails on skin the kind you like
to play slave and master every night an old game everyone knows
all the time the only time you see yourself red on the skin
beating another low to the ground it becomes what does it become
dear mother:
the only slave narratives you know are the ones where I am in chains
I wanted to tell you to stop but another page turns never enough light in the day
the teacher says my words belong to the lineage of yellow women on boats coming to
America the waves move the blue waves move sheets of paper held by popsicle sticks by two
people two hands on two sides nothing happens when they stop moving the boat stops and then
mother tell me what happens when we get off the boat who beat you who do I have to blame
the motions of peristalsis digestion of time and space by two sides pull and pull
you would rather be dead don’t tell anyone just remember I tell you I tell you
a little girl just like you saw body bags falling off the towers in Hong Kong a memory
this is just a memory I have for you from my childhood remind me
remind me why you keep me alive to tell others I didn’t tell you
I didn’t tell you a thing you tell me there is no time for stories welcome to America
dear white woman dear teacher:
in the living room of the white woman teacher the master the owner of the red black cut
Chinoserie whimsy the white woman asks you her yellow slave to serve her tea the yellow girl’s face
a face of a tea cup to gaze into and then throw in the sink a design for the occasion of tea leaves read sooner
discarded the stories better left loss the beauty of carriage the yellow woman the billows of wind and wave
mouth mists to whisper the yellow veins of her yellow body scroll in calligraphy flourish the ink
dries the page turns the words see themselves themselves the sin of being yellow of being blossoms to
remember: if the white woman asks you to excuse yourself and leave yourself behind
the condition everything asks itself wonder where in furniture you propose to have purpose
if in becoming have you what your teacher tasks can you be and not more can you understand the yellow
in sunlight loses color
then will you be your own sun
then will you be
then will you
in America there is no time to cry
in high school my geometry teacher taught me pink in the face to
go to the bathroom wet some paper towels cold and apply them
to my eyes to reduce the swelling to look more appropriate because
it is too early in the morning to admit what last night or rather an hour
ago might have happened because it doesn’t happen if you
erase it and it didn’t this is a lesson I learned early
this is the only conversation we ever had about it
we didn’t talk afterwards and nothing happened
you were asking me what I know and I just told you
nothing this is what I know
when you have children
the condition of everything
asks you if you will become
have you become, you ask me
you ask me if I am becoming anything
I tell her, mother,
I tell you I am no longer the gum under your shoe
I was never the gum under your shoe
I am nobody’s shoe
Annie Won is a poet, yoga teacher, and medicinal chemist who resides in Somerville, MA. Annie is particularly interested in spaces of mind, body, and page and creative opportunities within these domains. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a Juniper Writing Institute scholarship recipient. Her chapbook with Brenda Iijima, Once Upon a Building Block, recently published with Horse Less Press this summer and individual chapbook, so i can sleep, is forthcoming from Nous-Zot Press. Her work has appeared in Shampoo, RealPoetik, New Delta Review, and Delirious Hem, and is forthcoming from EAOGH, TheThePoetry, and TENDE RLION. Her critical reviews can be seen at American Microreviews and Interviews.
