CLORIS SHI
California Grievances
Morning comes and poppies clink in fever, the sound,
a high-pitched shiver of empty glass bottles just off a tilted
mouth. It is how a fish gasps for milk not water in California,
How from here, if I squint hard enough, I might mistake this
polluted shoreline for cow dairy, lips foaming and stained.
This pandemic, I’ve learned how it is to need, kneed, knead,
egg-washing my yellow skin tan and brown,
then smoothing myself white, whipped cream farting out of a plastic bag
into the shape of roses. Lately, I pour vinegar to cake batter and wonder if this is it:
to accentuate and not be tasted, an acid and wanted,
just to feel the tangy buzz of unaccountable,
or to know if this is the depth of flavor.
I am filling this skeleton with nothing but ocean water
carrying dilutions of a homeland I had left behind,
battering the salt so it’s worn tired to sugar,
both colorless and held in pinches.
Lately, I add salt to prolong the sugar-high, trace out
a longer list of artificial possibilities. I am addicted
to some immigrant’s dream, the butter sticking to my palate,
processed food melting on the tongue,
fingers greasy of the same color
and reaching for more.
In this country, it is easier for me to lower my head,
the same way eating is almost like praying, or choking, or suffocating,
the windpipe always slapped shut. Here, this fork is almost violent,
the soda pop pop pops like the sound of schoolyard bullets
or of slurs hitting the warm belly. I tuck childhood back
into cellophane candy wrappers, forget that this land of plenty is
coping, that more people are full
than are starving. Sometimes, I dig into this food.
Sometimes, I shovel this knife down to this soil in search of a Gold Rush,
only for a dirt red meat cut open,
some skin to bite, some piece too big for me to chew.
I hold the chicken drumstick with bruised napkins, lick
wet oil stuck on skin, flesh stuck between canines.
There are some things even water can’t clean.
Dry, dry state, I have forgotten the different
synonyms we use for thirst, and what are we but
potted roses worrying about heat.
How hunched over this soil, we are just weeds
reaching for the same sun in hunger, longing for
the same sugar, growing thorns
to protect us from the past. So what can I do but swell
these poppies with salt and secrets,
if only to pull them out, these roots cracking the house foundation,
pop-up garden wall springing closed.
Cloris Shi is a Chinese-American poet and editor from Southern California. Her works have been recognized by Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, The New York Times, and other journals. In her free time, you can find her playing piano or walking along the ocean.