Portrait of Ma as Chinese Paper Cutting
In Ma’s mouth, every syllable begins
with a blade—her throat damp with red,
rupturing like a whistle. Twenty-five, at
airport security: she is dissected with American
cutlery—plastic rulers & x-acto knives. Halved
like a pomegranate, every seed of herself birthing
the possibility of a new wound, a new animal.
In her necropsy, all her creases circled back
to the same cause of migration—an invitation,
crinkled on the floor. All her wantings misplaced,
left to rot in dirty takeout boxes. Tossed aside like a
mistress. Like Saturdays, at the market, where men
gnaw at her dress. Where she is rendered into a
projection of desire—double-lidded fox, good driver,
docile woman. A bearer of 福 (fú), but sons first. I
watch her become a steak at an all-you-can-eat
buffet: razor-bladed into amnesia, every edge of
herself deprived of a story. She tells me that I will
someday inherit her geometries, absorb them as light.
That our wounds will never fill, our hunger always
relapsing. At night, the both of us drowning in our
asymmetries. The both of us: folding ourselves into swans,
still attempting to fly.
* 福 (fú): Means fortune in Mandarin. The character is often made as a cutout for Chinese paper cutting.
with a blade—her throat damp with red,
rupturing like a whistle. Twenty-five, at
airport security: she is dissected with American
cutlery—plastic rulers & x-acto knives. Halved
like a pomegranate, every seed of herself birthing
the possibility of a new wound, a new animal.
In her necropsy, all her creases circled back
to the same cause of migration—an invitation,
crinkled on the floor. All her wantings misplaced,
left to rot in dirty takeout boxes. Tossed aside like a
mistress. Like Saturdays, at the market, where men
gnaw at her dress. Where she is rendered into a
projection of desire—double-lidded fox, good driver,
docile woman. A bearer of 福 (fú), but sons first. I
watch her become a steak at an all-you-can-eat
buffet: razor-bladed into amnesia, every edge of
herself deprived of a story. She tells me that I will
someday inherit her geometries, absorb them as light.
That our wounds will never fill, our hunger always
relapsing. At night, the both of us drowning in our
asymmetries. The both of us: folding ourselves into swans,
still attempting to fly.
* 福 (fú): Means fortune in Mandarin. The character is often made as a cutout for Chinese paper cutting.
Jan / Feb 2024
Samantha Hsiung is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Red Wheelbarrow, and Reed Magazine, among others. She has been recognized by the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, Hollins University, Columbia College Chicago, and more.
Art: Donna Morello, Collage