LIAN WANG - POEMS

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 Bridge

Children 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 8th

​A 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
​

​Like rotors of a helicopter--
the same blades that can cut,
the same wind that can lift.
 
The first time we spoke, you told me:
Don’t fuck up.
The tallies on my scoreboard grew,
yet every time I scrawled another line,
you found a way to erase it. 
I started writing in permanent ink,
for myself only,
dusting off your shavings.
I stopped waiting for you to shake your head,
so you just looked the other way.
Until you didn’t.
Until you told me:
You did good, kid.
 
Strange, 
how sounds can hurt and can comfort,
how the ones you make
can feel so light and so heavy.
If I stand too close
and graze my fingers on them,
they mark with brown patches and red lines.
If I walk away,
I only feel a distant breeze,
a low murmur.
If I strap them to my back,
they wring me around,
jolt my heart out of its cadence,
numb my limbs 
but not my toiling mind.
They face me towards the sun,
blinding, 
and haul me through the clouds,
up.