lullaby with rising dawn
by Katie B. Tian
slowly, i am forgetting the face
of my shadow, the names of my ancestors
and the shape of my body carved alabaster.
my mother is in the kitchen forgetting
my name so i have to scoop out my bloodred
heart and stamp it on the tarmac pavement.
my father is praying to false gods
so i have to flee and flee into a field
of dead crabgrass and hyacinths until
i choke. i am pieces and pieces
of a whole, the ones before, hurtling
toward the same dead end. i cast a fish net
for memories, collect them like last night’s
dinner, all silt and sand through my
fingertips: two empty chairs at the dinner
table. one pair of shoes too small
by the coat hanger, one leaving in the earliest
morning. one child who does not know
the words to a lullaby. i’ve learned to remake
myself a ghost, to fold myself into the wings
of a paper crane. so i have to hold
resentment against the innocent.
so i drown in ‘90s hit songs and radio
static to remember my parents. so i chart my
fragments into blood-metallic dawns before
they wash away in the tsunami. i remember:
it is only when the sun spills its yolk
that my shadow begins to mock me.
the summer of cherries
by Katie B. Tian
i. dawn
remember the first summer
when we called ourselves sisters:
how we ran cherry pits off our tongues and
buried them beneath the conifers gilded stems.
how we were untouchable—
girls in shiny taffeta all puzzle pieced together
weaving firefly strands in naked palms.
cloying droplets stained our plumage crimson
& fed the pavement in soft torrents.
—“you know cherry pits are toxic?” yes
and i threw my head back laughing.
ii. charade
remember the second summer
when we tried to eclipse our youth:
our prepubescent bodies camouflaged in bikinis,
parched lips puckered toward an ear-tangible sky.
our cherry plants too spurned to grow tall,
we could only swallow dirt-caked confections
& spit sticky convoluted metaphors:
“red is not death,” you said, “but love.”
“do you even know what love is,” i asked—
back and forth, us as pseudointellectuals.
iii. verdict
remember the final summer:
when our honeyed tongues thawed
into metallic streaks & soiled ashtrays.
—tell me, did you meet a boy,
do you know love now?
i may still sever these boughs for kindling,
splayed like gossamer limbs on asphalt.
outside, you: a centerpiece, satin curls
slick against the carcass of a dead doe,
cherry-clotted fingerprints as damning as anything.
haven’t i made a mess of us now?
About the Author
Katie B. Tian is a sixteen-year-old Chinese-American writer and journalist from New York. A Scholastic Art & Writing National Medalist and two-time Adelphi Quill Awards First Place winner, her work is published or forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review, Kissing Dynamite, and Blue Marble Review, among others. She currently serves as the Creative Writing Director of online literary magazine The Incandescent Review. Apart from writing, she has various talents, such as singing in the shower and eating her weight in brown sugar boba bars.