NOVA WANG

2022 Poetry Contest Finalist

cw – blades, references to violence

Self-Portrait as Metal, Decaying

---

These days, I open all my poems against a blade.
I turn eighteen with a Swiss Army Knife
in hand, slice cake so thin the pieces disappear,

expended into steel. This is how I enter
the world: knees scabbed, fists before my face.
See, at knifepoint, the wound opens before

the cut. Flinches in anticipation of hurt,
like a bird spreading its feathers, bracing
itself for the fall. How I shield my face

with hands stretched into wings.
In biology, I learn my body as fight-
or-flight. Feedback loop. Reaction cascade.

Everything echoes into something else, the way
punches rebound into my own fist. The way
a mother rebounds into child into

child into child. At the door, my mother tucks
car keys between my knuckles, slips alarms
up my sleeves, and isn’t this another bedtime

story: warnings passed hand to hand?
Breaths cradled in my fists, gasping against
the ache of night? In biology, I learn inheritance

as blood reborn into another body, so I split birds
open and baptize my hands in their flight. Break
their wings and turn my palms to the sky.

//

These days, I open. xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I turn xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Knife,
xxxxxxx, so thin the xxxxxxxxxx steel xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxx opens xxxxxxxxxx in anticipation of hurt.
In biology, I learn my body as fight, xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx the way punches
rebound xxxxxxx into child into child into
child. At the door, my mother xxxxxxxxxx slips
car keys xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx hand to hand,
xxxxxxxxxxxxx, so I split xxxxx open. xxxxxxxxxxx
Break xxxxxxxxxxxxx my palms. xxxxxxxxxx

//

These days, I open, xxxx
xx and xx open, xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx and xxxx, open. xxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Previously published in Gigantic Sequins

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