SOPHIA LIU
To Be Bound
i
This earth gives us a ground—for what.
We have been elasticized, tongue-slashed,
grinded down to our floral embroidery.
Imagine mothers folding in their
daughters toes out of nothing but
precedent. What is love
when there is power.
i
Rid of your association.
i
Let it be known that like all suffering, this did not surface
out of the earth. It came from a speck of dust that
dispersed like a blown dandelion carried on the wings of
sparrows. Planted
into the ground as they flocked off
and through the
roots, came
again.
i
Think of Cinderella. How the glass caressed her heel and
like that, no more peasant girl. No more
blood knees stitched cloth water pail.
Gowned and graced, she was beautiful. Look at us. A thousand of us
crowding the imperial palace for glass eyes drowned in luxury.
Could you let those orbs play with you? His hand would turn a page in
the manual and say—let us try this one today.
Will the affirmation undermine the pain. Will you finally be
a golden lily?
i
Unless barbaric. Unless grotesque. Unless
you wish for society to fall after all it gives
you. Your mother after all she feeds you.
i
mouths dry on star anise / let us yearn for labor /
warmth or pain: a candlelight hushed by / ghosts in a piano room /
blood or / body: a confirmation
i
Does a gangrened lily look white to you?
Do lotus petals grow out of charcoal?
i
For once, the poor, with nothing,
have their bodies
to
themselves.
i
& we pretend this is long gone as you
tell me everything you want to change
about yourself. As you ask me why don’t we
just give in—when it would be so much
easier. & we could be liked more. The dust
still land as freckles on our cheeks.
One night, as you comment on other girls’
appearances, I tell you to stop. I tell you to
be grateful for life & all the life behind
us. A week ago, you thought
differently. A month ago, giggling at the thought that
you could be loved. But no love exists in a
slipper. The women before you carved their soles into
frozen soil and accepted being crippled,
not broken. And here
you strut the city streets alone.
Refinement carries its ugliness like a topheavy suitcase.
Let it be emptied out. Let us pull out
the weeds. Let the rain fall and drain the
sediments, the blood out. We will uncurl;
we will reshape and stride out.
Sophia Liu lives in New York. Her poems and artwork appear or are forthcoming in the Perch, Storm Cellar, the Ekphrastic Review, Whispering Prairie Press, Underblong, the Shore, and elsewhere. She has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the NCTE, Smith College, and Hollins University. She wants a pet cat.