Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Kristin Chang
Necromancy
______for my great-grandmother in Nanjing, 1937
I hound my own hands, pry them
______from prayer. Give me a body
new to belief, a girl to debone
______with my teeth. Give me
a bouquet whiffing of spent
______blades & I’ll braid night
a noose, stitch a veil bright
______as skin. Today I gather rain
in my gutter-length hair, I
______salt the soil & grow back
my knees, my god’s name
______is grief. The way a tree
measures its years in thirst
______I sever a limb for each
man I wish fathered me:
______today it’s the priest, salt
colored beard & a choir-bruised
______song I’ll disown from my mother
tongue. In bed with another
______man’s daughter, I seek her side
like a spear, I hook out
______both my eyes. I play loose
with loss, can’t undress
______without first burying myself
to the neck. I’ve got no mouth
______for myth. Watch me revise this
woman into a windchime
______I wear between my thighs.
Morning publishes my bed
______as bloodstain. At birth, my mother
nicked off her nipples
______so I’d never be fed
a future. She buries my teeth
______in the backyard & I search
on all fours, hold
______my own leash & a blade
as chaperone. I’m the bone
______shunning its born shape, I’m the lisp
of light no sun can pronounce. A daughter’s
______tongue tautens to bowstring. I finger
the fletched arrow, my furring
______breast. My history shot full
of plotholes. In this one, I live
______as a river god & water a wife
from mud. My mother taught me
______to pay every body of water
before crossing it. What she threw
______into the sea: one penny, both her legs & a baby
bulletholed. To come
______to this country, I kiss
the breasts of a statue & stone
______my body to the bone. I pledge my neck
to every knife, every woman
______I sang out of the water’s
widowed mouth, how
______I repay my gods by never
dying how I’m told, never
______asking to keep the body
born already sold.
In Pine Bluff, Arkansas
my mother walks seven miles
______to the grocery store. a white
boy in a truck throws an egg
______in her face & it fries, yoking
her skin to sunlight
______a yellow that oils
you flammable. at the grocery store
______my mother miscounts her coins
& the cashier says chink
______bitch. all my mother’s best
insults are animals: cow, cock, spineless
______fish we fry in our mouths. we spit bone
into cake batter. we ruin
______birthdays, sing in accents, slay
anthems silent. god the streak
______of blonde in our hair. my mother
says she can’t believe
______we live with animals.
when the rain hums
______a hymn on our roof,
we dance. we sip
______storms. my throat
opens like an umbrella
______& I swallow stone
fruits. my mother spends
______hours in a field, bunching
grapes into fists. we get
______a break on slaughter day.
some animals bred
______for meat & others
labor. in this country
______I am both
the piglet & the butcher’s
______hook it was born for.
Etymology
So many mothers ago, I married
into myself. I am bride & groom
of my mouth wedding
my mouth. I eat men
who want me & drink sinks
of knives. Like any good wick
I wear a gown of wax. Like any good
wife I water my waist like a vase
of wasps. Zip me into the fireplace
& I’ll warm to you. Smoke becomes me
becoming your sky. In another life, my body
is only what you put inside it: steam
swords & mirrors, a magician’s scarf, every trick
disappearance. A mouth is only as big
as its prey. In second grade, I still
could not pronounce my name. Kristin came out
Christian, my body rhyming with no
belief. In second grade, the boys
locked me in the bathroom, said I’d be
let out if I could say bathroom. In my mouth
it was bat room, night thick
with wings. Kristin, Christian
chink: how I learn the name
of the meat is not the name
of the animal. If cow is beef
I am butchered. I am pounding
on the bathroom walls & the pipes
burst into birds. A puddle of piss
arranges itself in the shape
of my thirst. Eleven hours
later, I drink. I don’t mistake
survival for song, kneeling
for prayer. I beg to be let out
of my mouth.
Like god, I have
no name but the one
you never wanted
to learn.