POETRY SUPPORT NETWORK

some part of me knows this song / like a windchime mistranslated / into a heartbeat.

teething season for new skin is a chapbook containing fifteen poems about truth, memory, and ghosts (the dead ones, the living ones, and the ones in between).

written by quinn lui | published by l’éphémère review | cover by carrie ma

This is nowhere land. This is the violent hills where winds howl empty branches hoarse. This is the tide ebbing out; never to return. This is quiet remarks and hushed conversations you’ll never hear. This is the three a.m. Sundays where time felt flexible enough to taste.

We are the coupling of birds reunited in the moment where April blurs into May; sweet berries on forked tongues and nectar slipping crushed beneath nails and stained fingertips.

Here is where we can uncurl our fists just enough to ornate the desecration of our swaddled youth.

I stare out the side window into the unlit depths of this countryside as hollowness replaces the whelming weariness that accumulates over years and years and years without reconciliation

medusa on a friday night, eyes red and tangled hair, cries for the last time  and says no more.

puts matchstick to tinder,  burns everything down and twice  for good measure, so close to the water a warning for poseidon– do not come another step closer.  if you do,  let me show you what’s waiting

let me show what danger looks like hungry and wanting  the way men seem to consume women whole 

like snakes  unhinging their jaws and let me  show you how dangerous 

i am–

Breathe. A word to bring patience and recovery. A word that allows us to yield our vulnerabilities for the sake of maintaining some semblance of sanity. These days are often more tiring than the last. These cold, cold winds are the commonplace details we’ve been taught to ignore. The world grasps for a way to keep our heads in the clouds of the upper atmosphere where there’s only enough oxygen left to leave us complacent.

Linger. A word whispered between lovers, between dear friends, to strangers. A word meant to shelter warmth and a call for you to stay in my heart, my embrace, my mind. They entice us to stay in the dwellings of love, but sometimes it’s more important to endure the cold, cold stars at night. There is a life for the taking somewhere in this world. We can leave reliable glances behind for the numerous casualties of living, as long as we remember the arms that will welcome us back home.

Oh peace, pieces of my heart have been devoured by the monstorous deeds we have yet to commit; They are strung high with the passions of a decade licking at our teeth

So cruel is the way we live wrapped inside the cavernous echoes of ourselves, So cruel is the vaporous image of a sinister end wrapped in thin lies to cover up the blood

Bonnie’s hands are on my shoulders, his mouth working around my name like he’s trying to tongue open a switchblade. “Don’t talk,” I tell him.

Blood froths at Bonnie’s mouth, flecks of red catching at the corners. His pretty bottle-green eyes are raised to the ceiling, interrogating God – but God’s been real quiet lately, and all Bonnie’s got is a sack of cash, a pistol with the grip worn down in the shapes of his fingers, and me.

“Should’a stole more time, less money,” I tell him.

Bonnie laughs, choking on it a little, and I put his head in my lap so I can pet the sweat-damp hair off his forehead. I’ve seen him perspire in all kinds of ways, and I’ll admit that this is not my favorite.

“The cops,” he rasps.

I shake my head, kiss his brow, hope he’s blood-sick enough to forget about them. It’s just him and me, that’s all there is, red-tasting lips like we’re kissing around a mouthful of coins. He told me he’d die for me a thousand times, but I never thought he’d go and do it.

Shattered window glass around us glitters like diamonds on jewelry store carpet. “Love me, baby,” I whisper into his hair, putting a palm to his chest to feel his shallow breathing. “You gotta love me.”

they tell you minority language, pull out two bloody teeth as evidence, and nothing feels more hollow than that moment. you are standing in your mother’s shoes, two hands over the sign i will not speak my native tongue, and i wonder if i’m supposed to feel shame. 

the thing is, i will not speak this language as fluently as my grandfather does. 

the thing is, my tongue is too clumsy, crammed together with english, a generation too late and 2,000 miles apart. tell me, if i had learned it earlier, would it give me back time with my grandma–i

stumble over the same sentence– i’m sorry. i don’t understand.

i tried so hard, this staying afloat in a sea that feels so vast, i don’t know where it will end, but i swam to the wrong shore. 

a different kind of battlefield, my love

e.b.

that was when I noticed her. standing on the other side of the table. there was always something between us–      a table, a row of chairs, another person. but I could see her perfectly clearly, how she dipped and rose again in time with the music, how I found      I couldn’t stop watching her. somehow I started to realize she’d never look directly at me–we were in the           same room, and she couldn’t look me in the eye, and somehow I couldn’t look away.

I worried it was the wrong kind of looking. I worried it was dirty, she’d like me          even less than my mind already whispered she did. but still I stared. entranced by how easily she moved–a gentle sway of hips, lifting a hand to brush hair back from her face.      even in the low light, I could see everything      I wanted to see–her face, her neck and her collarbone,      her bared arms all aglow in golden light, and it was all I could see through the darkness and all the space between us–

What does it mean to have a purpose in life?

Why do foxes chase after themselves and why are teenagers so often the only ones turning into Orpheus–has the temptation of instant gratification grown too sweet on the tongues of adults? We want to know why we are alive, yet to do that we have to realize that life is meaningless and soon we will all be devoured by the repetition of the mundane; Quiet figures try to silence our minds but we have spent too long undoing the stitches from our lips to let them violate our homilies

tell me to come home– tell me to drop the knife, the guns leave the bloodstained boots at the door.

i didn’t take anything of myself when i went to war, just the memory of you and a rifle i shaped my hands to fit around, already one foot in the ground and  ain’t that a crying shame?

so what happens when i come back and you’re not the same?

(maybe i’m not the same.        i can’t tell anymore–)

what happens when all i got left are  my own two hands  and what i can’t trust?