Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry
Creation Myth:
My Childbride Great-Grandmother and a Hilsa Fish
She bends bone
with her girl hands, her
mother hands willing
the flesh to fall away with ease
with ease, shh—she breathes, it will be
easier if you forget the river, shh—she
breathes the damp
of the floor into her feet
the cold packed dirt that holds her
captive in this new murder, shh—she
whispers,
it will be easier if you forget.
Your swimming eye,
too fierce to ignore, is
too dry to see, the river
has abandoned you, her eyes
Issue 3 | Summer 2011
swimming with sweatstung tears
and the stink of skin
stripped from flesh
divided into iron pans: here,
the back, the stomach there, the blade
has stained her
girl hands,
her mother hands
with the metal spice of its stench, she swears, I'll
set you aswim again.
in spice, in
turmeric and cumin and clove,
and you will glow
golden, shh—the snap
of a skeleton in her girl hands, her mother—
hands her a memory of water.
From the shore,
the sky reaches grey into the horizon.