TROLL CONVENTIONAL THOUGHT by Victoria Iacchetta
FĒNG-LIÁNG by Avalon Lee
I. North
The first time you hold your grandson, your fingertips listen to his pulse to distinguish between the rhythm of Chinese ichor versus Japanese sap. Bamboo stalks sprout in his chest in place of arteries, and oolong chá from centuries of tea ceremonies seep into his lungs, warming his lotus breaths. But the talons that knot in your whiskers as if to say mine mine mine, Japanese.
The in-laws already branded him with kanji characters, so your daughter asks if you’ve chosen a Chinese name yet. “Can’t have both,” you tell her. That’s outdated, she argues. Grow up. Daughter, the compass needle is resolute on north, no matter the dynasty. The Chinese invented it so.
Her breaking point.
This is the last time you hold your grandson.
II. Japs
Your daughter stops writing, cursing the mailbox with a drought, and when you need your wife’s solace the most, the hospital news comes, so you ring up the nearest florist for yellow lilies. Grocery shopping alone is no longer a choice but a given. Wi-Fi imbalances the life energy, qì, in the meridian flow to your spleen, according to an eastern medicine magazine. But solitude isn’t that spiritually uplifting, contrary to monk teachings, so you use the downtown library’s computer to shadow her Facebook account, cowering behind binary code.
Since when did your daughter start eating sashimi?
Why is the living room wall smothered with minimalist canvasses instead of your niánhuà painting, the one with a chubby baby riding an imperial goldfish?
Snippets of in-laws, descendants of murderers and rapists and thieves, cheering on your grandkid as he conquers the stairway, one tread at a time. In his sesame-seed eyes, you see your baby sister, the same eyes that melded with yours when you cradled her during that nine-minute bomb raid, melded until telepathy synced you two. You could taste the spoilt milk and plasma on her taste buds, liquid salvation from your mother’s bulleted breast. She eavesdropped on your thoughts and knew exactly why her breakfast had an iron touch.
Those same eyes. But pixelated.
Has your daughter already forgotten? Forgotten your spoken chronicles of your father’s rubber soles fused to the steel carpet of a Japanese gas chamber, though the Japanese textbooks claim otherwise. Your baby sister, cocooned in dishtowels, lobbed in the air for another Jap soldier to catch at the end of his bayonet, as they did with all the other village babes. The same telepathy allowed the bayonet to pierce your belly, too. The Japs are why you had to steal a corpse’s identity off the black-market for a ticket to America. Why a shopsoiled Toyota is worth more than fifteen thousand dollars; the single transaction a betrayal of your roots. Of hers.
Your daughter, just one more thing the Japs have stolen.
III. 1976
A post from two years ago, a picture of a picture in honor of your birthday. The clock-font date lives in the bottom corner, circa 1976. You, mortar faced. The dye of an Otter Popsicle trickles down her wrist, firecracker violet. Her matching tear stains and brittle grin. That Friday, shelved away in your memory. On a mid-August afternoon at the local playground, she rode nowhere on the frog spring rider. A hop too ambitious, and she took a tumble in the tanbark moat. A yelp swelled into wails. The nomad pushing the ice cream cart saw the opportunity and took it. You sighed and dug out your wallet. Chinese proverbs glorify the art of frugality, but what else were you supposed to do?
The nomad’s tinny jingle weasels into your ear canal, soaring above the vinyl record’s èrhú melody.
Is she at the same park with her son, introducing him to Sir Hoppington? Is he even old enough to ride him? When is his birthday again?
IV. Fēng-Liáng
Tell me, what do you do when your family lives only in a Facebook feed? How do you protect your grandkid from the wicked in-laws? How do you ensure someone, anyone, will be there to lay yellow lilies on your grave, the same way you did with mine? As years pass, your ceramic history decays in the kiln, fissures ghosting the porcelain like incense smoke. Once you join me, there will be no vessel for the memory of your baby sister. Dearest, the family tree ends with you. And how much longer can you stomach watching your grandson grow up through the chromatic filter?
Perhaps you can bargain with your ancestors, or maybe let paper preserve your story, though even you know paper without a narrator will simply become another victim of time’s dementia. That tinny jingle, the city’s advice, slips past the window mesh, but even an Otter Popsicle can’t fix this.
Yes, Dear, of course the compass needle always points north, but where does your north lie?
The ballpoint hovers over a blank sheet as you search the kitchen tiles for the right words, unsure where to begin. I sigh in exasperation before murmuring my suggestion to the eastern currents. The draft tickles your earlobe.
In the resolute strokes of our mother tongue, you calligraph a name.
Previously published by The Heritage Review.
Avalon Felice Lee is an Asian-American Californian. She has been writing poetry and prose since the age of eleven. When not writing, she’s probably practicing cello, assaulting the ears of nearby victims.
Victoria Iacchetta, of Spencerport, New York, is currently working towards a Master’s degree in London, England. Her first chapbook, “The Cubicle” was published with Gap Riot Press in November of 2019. Recent poetry and artwork have appeared in Crêpe & Penn and Ang(st) Zine. Other poems or artwork have appeared in: The Honey Mag, The Gravity of the Thing, Ghost City Press, The Sunlight Press, Vamp Cat Magazine, Bottlecap Press, and Peach Mag.