-
Coda: “Broken Words,” A Poem
Praise to the sweltering, yet comforting summers in Taipei, where the unrelenting humidity clings to my skin. Far into the night, my family and I walk through the brightly lit, crowded rows of the Night Market, bustling with the shouts of street vendors, fragrant with stinky tofu and Taiwanese sausages. The real city that never sleeps—you can get your hair done at midnight, grab food or drinks from a “seven[1],” watch movies in the theater until 3am, or sing at karaoke bars. My cousins send over a basket filled with lian wu[2] and bala.[3] Behind the doors of our family home silence prevails, where I stumble over my words in…
-
“Our Window,” A Love Poem
Sometimes, the air smells of you when I unlock our mahogany dust-coated chest Captured whiffs from the past that never seem to dissolve like the feeling of an intimate kiss on damp, bare skin. Once, I wipe the dust off, staining my hands with hints of dried tears and fallen petals of bleeding hearts the lock slips off, and I peer in the kaleidoscope of this still world, the fresh scent of pine trees will escape, but they remain trapped inside where the wind brushes and leaves and comes back. Locks of laughter emerge, hushed whispers under warm sheets in darkness, save for the glow of untouched, locked phone screens.…
-
“Still” and “Close,” Gallery Series
I. Still We were strangers whispering under the silver moonlight of sacred stories seeping through every inch of our bodies. Deep into the night, we felt warmth from the stars above, not the cold drafts. It was new like a translucent shell of an unwritten book, eagerly waiting for the pencil to be held. ~ We were lovers curled up on a yellow picnic blanket under the warm sun, feeling the air thicken with honey. We created our own language, one that only we could understand. It sounded like the waves humming, and the rustling of the pages as the wind brushed by for a moment. ~ We were…
-
Art of Handwriting
My relationship to handwriting has transformed and grown alongside me. One of my earliest memories of handwriting was when I was in first grade. My teacher asked everyone to hold the infamous Ticonderoga #2 pencil, and she walked around the room checking how we each held our pencil. For every student that was holding a pencil incorrectly, she gave them a pencil grip object. As she neared my desk, my heart was beating quickly in fear, and next thing I knew, she dropped a grip on my desk. My face burned red with shame. I also saw the look of embarrassment in the faces of others who were told that…
-
“Crafting my 21-Year-Old Self,” A Portrait Poem
~~~ Hammering down on the mortal page, creating my double clothed in words. Pockets of invisible light penetrating my skin, exposing ruby jewels: tissues, veins, & blood. I build transparent cabinets, housing my strung together vignettes waiting to be unsealed. I cross out uneven bangs from an unfortunate haircut for long, steady black waves. I paint pensive, brown wrapping themselves around a bouquet of fiction books and prayers. I carve mountainous curves on my rosy lips which grumble & trace the sounds of Ancient Greek. Smearing with crumbly charcoal, I erase Mandarin from the page. I stick my sweet teeth together, the tools in my toolbox that work but can’t…
