To the poet of immigrant home-building, dislocation, feminine monstrosity, and blank space
after Jennifer S. Cheng
1
you wedged your tongue between my ribs, speaking of shadows and skeletons
I split open my body so the syllables could better haunt my crevices
flesh knows how to be porous
I have always suspended my weight to keep from being known
but all my life I have
wanted to know how to speak
2
To feel the hot touch of an echo
To hear the simultaneous fracture of bone
To study the volume and density of the silence created by a word that could not be translated
(because 緣分is not serendipity, 孝順 not filial piety)
To forge from the unborn shapes angled in my throat
a metaphor, a line
To reach a hand into a crater, an interval of silence,
and encounter a sister
3
Dear Unsayable Word,
I put the shell of my ear against your spleen, waiting for you to take on mass.
4
forgive me unfinished sentence
for these were all the words I knew
this was all I had
5
( )
6
while I was trying to make myself disappear
envying the katydid for being able to resemble its home
I tried to tell you
that all my words were filched from half-open lips
the ends of sentences plucked from colonial tombs
you said listen
when we are trying to say the world, we are trying to say its holes1
said
the body doubles what it cannot hold2
so I let my skin stretch tear lengthen
the femur bend to traverse the distance between
one self and another
swallow the cuticle, a hard history
at the center: a new body
1 Jennifer S. Cheng, “Dear Blank Space: A Literacy Narrative,” Literary Hub.
2 Jennifer S. Cheng, “the impact of foreign bodies; the earth collapsing,” The Nation.
Christine Huang 黃凱琳 (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese-American writer and artist. She joins the large community of voices calling for the liberation of the Palestinian people and oppressed people everywhere, and she stands in solidarity with those struggling against colonialism, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and all systems of domination.
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