ANNA FENG
emotion sickness
for the lives lost to the senseless killings on march 16th 2021
i need her to live through this poem / so she’ll remain in the words i write / no matter how insignificant they are / string this solidarity into a spine / surrender this ink for blood because / i will never do her justice / without knowing the person behind / her skin / the only thing that mattered in those headlines / i’ve stopped making sense of them now / let serifs bleed ink into the driveway / too little ink for too much blood / polished off the sidewalks the second they forget her / she dies a second time / so i play a god in effigy / resurrecting her spirit from photos albums and euphemisms / i hold the hollow gaze of a girl / and tell her / she was built to be bruised from the inside out / remind her how we were / six and sick / of feeling foreign / coloring ourselves golden / trading our serrated language for white approval / long before we could grasp that no concessions could ever be enough to warrant / white acceptance / wishfulness made us easier to flay / minimize to matted flesh / label heathen / pathogen / monolith / treat us all the same / but the cruelty chose her / in this sick game of odds / spent anticipating when it’s my turn / nobody taught me how i should prepare to leave / to grieve / to lose / to die to liberties held / as close as we hold our elderly / arms circled around her children / afraid of the mother-less mess she’d leave behind / thoughts i exhaust on the negative space i might mend with my heritage and ancestors in due time / but the clocks sustain their nescient march / aiming a copper finger at the race without a pen / devoid of fruitful words / unflinching martyrs for your thoughts and prayers
Anna Feng is a student at Del Norte High School in San Diego, California. She is a California Arts Scholar and Iowa Young Writers Workshop participant. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest, and is forthcoming in Dishsoap Quarterly. She owns a pair of red cowgirl boots she wishes she could take out on the town more often.