Three Poems by Sophia Liu

"Answer Me" is a collaboration with photographer Yiying Chen.

Answer Me

Sichuan, China: In defiance of the Chinese government, artist Ai Wei Wei sought to identify the names of students who were killed or missing from the 2008 earthquake.

Love

On bisexuality in Han dynasty China

You’re eating alone. You’re saying how the earth
is growing ill—how all of a sudden we’re like pothos putrefying

in gorgeous daylight. Last night, your son called me at dawn and
we spoke in misunderstandings. He left a bitten peach by

his nightstand and

hands soft enough to crumble. Your son: your shadow, or a boy born
from the first half of me. I speak for him because I can

barely do so myself. Because a girl like me can kiss a thousand lips and wash onto shore
empty.
                                                 I wanted to tell you about the man

with the cut sleeve, or how I dream
about having children just because I want to prove that despite it all, it’s possible
to grow up happy.                     I know nothing but that a child could cry
in anyone’s arms because

I’ve cried too long in my own.

About fathers & the moon. About how Confucius was a beggar and God
the girl with money.
About how you were once a small child with callow hands lusting
for gold and now you bury those hands in a suit pocket and accuse

the world of spreading ill.

Before bed, I think about which ancestors to venerate. The poison ivy cuddled up
with our oaks is dying. Each passing cloud is slipping away another love from this lifetime.

I have tried to define the silence of your chewing mouth, the way it bites at a bird to keep it from
soaring.

California Dreaming

In the 1850s, the air indulged in                                  gold that showered the mountains like
blood from every brother’s skull.                                 A white man’s wet dream—
we were emptied of crops from the Huang He and       brought mouths to
our land, parched. We startled awake in                       blinding light,
customs houses, promised                                          the sap of yuccas if
we stayed accommodating.                                          They smelled danger: they decreed
coins for our staying, called                                         their anger

necessary for peace.                                                    Justified, our men
toiled longer, found their hands                                  burning
in soap suds because                                                  with smoke,
laundry feminizes a                                                     white
man. I learned how the streets ache,                           intensifying
like a child’s crying. I grew                                    apprehensively, my immigrant
intoxicated with lucre,                                                 jousting for pennies. There goes

my misspent adolescence—                                         black with dirt,
slaving in the saloon.                                       The opium in
my mother’s placenta couldn’t save                             the roughness inside
me. Though woman-starved, a man called me                        a yellow whore dressed in a costume of
an archetypal goddess. Was I                                       otherness
supposed to blush?                                          When the luxury-high withered,
carnage charged through                                 my mouth numbed

the streets, our sobs seen as                           perpetual rain. I cut
a slice of tart, dug                               my fingers into
raw flour and let it                                           rot. We watched as our fathers,
hurt,                                        murmured their last words.     A whole percentage
filtered out.                                         We heard the footsteps of
the exonerated taunting                                   our ancestors, their faces
glaring like the sky                              in summer. I choose

my body                                                                       to barter with,
humouring                                                                               my saviors; little girl like
myself, playing with                 glass, indistinguishable. With
my barely-gray hair, I was deemed immoral.                Time inflamed
this country, settling for                                   short-term adoption.
our filth leaking all over                                   pure America.
My grave,                                             infrangible. This
is not an elegy, but a                                                    mirror—
reminder                                  now ablaze.