Sarah Yang: Mother as Sea Monster in America
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Mother as Sea Monster in America
Every weekend, my mother swallows this country with
shōchu, the insides of her cheeks sheening with scales.
When I touch her, my fingers are dripping with storm.
She grows five fins and loses all her hair,
smashing syllables between teeth and leaking light.
Her new skin is always glowing. In this
wilderness language, I imagine that I am a
small beast who knows how to swim
or I pretend to be part bird because I am tired of my
mother mistaking hunger for home.
She feeds me her wedding ring, tells
me that whatever we can love, we should eat. I
look a little more like her chewing on her clothes.
On land in bedroom, my mother kisses me, stretching
my skin into a sheet that furls from a single fist of smoke.
Night ends with my name being cupped like a flame.
& I want to dream about you the way an ocean drains
its salt before wounding a coastline. but
Mother, I keep wondering how we have come this far
imagining that you could undress any body of water.
Mother, when you clawed at the bed frame
& I laid my head on your lap, know that I slept sadly.
Sarah Yang is 17 years old and a senior in New Jersey. She is a first reader of Polyphony H.S., an international literary magazine and the poetry editor of Butcher Papers. She first began writing poetry in her freshman year, and since then, her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Sarah believes in poetry as a means to return home to your history and yourself.
