Lian Wang is a high school student at Mercersburg Academy, originally from Hong Kong. She is the literary editor-in-chief for Blue Review, her school’s literary and arts magazine. Her poems have appeared in Polyphony Lit and have been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Children of the BridgeChildren of the bridge don’t know where to go They drift to where the reds are brighter and bleed into the sky in comets and peonies behind rose-tinted glasses The children of the bridge only see the sky red no fireworks And they can’t scoot closer their palms and foreheads become clammy eyelashes brush against the cold and breathing only clouds the glass So they wander to the other end where they see themselves-- honey skin and ink for hair where their own voices utter sounds they cannot decipher and the lips before them choreograph a foreign dance Soon fog carries away the faces and whispers The children can’t see their fingers ahead or feet below so they retract toe to heel Back to the middle of the bridge between the glass and fog where there is nothing but the children and the bridge Boxing on 42nd and 8thA man is boxing on 42nd and 8th. He squints ahead, throwing sharp jabs, dodging cleanly that hook at his left. He boxes the cold, the 41 degrees that feels like 30, according to the Weather app. I say it feels more like 20, with a flannel tied around baggy jeans, hanging on a frame too narrow. He boxes his one loyal pal who has ears of a gentle breeze that carries his language in whiffs and howls, who buries his secrets and fears in the ceaseless laughter, in no one who knows his name. He boxes his body, his arms too shaky to wield a drill, his mind too muddled to tell a chai latte from a flat white. But jokes on them, he survives with pennies to his name. He boxes the illness that killed his family. His son inhaled his lungs open, seizing candy air. He never exhaled, but life still crept out parted lips in his sleep. His mother didn’t stand a chance, sweat cleansed soil from her wrinkles, traced the curve of her eyelids, gluing them shut. He boxes the life that’s too real. The stubborn breath, the kid with his son’s nose, the good mornings that some give him. They keep him awake. Rotors |
Categories
All
|