Old Friend
BY MELANIE ZHOU
2024 Adroit Prize for Poetry Recipient
Selected by Ocean Vuong
“This poem does what much successful writing does: stain the mind after reading. I kept seeing those red eyes and, not only that, the piece was undergirded with such mystery that the eyes kept growing in meaning, significance: becoming symbol and metaphor for something much larger, terrifying and beautiful at once. In short, the poem does more than what it says, radiating with quiet power.”
It is lunar new year and we touch
shoulders on the checkered lawn chair
while our mothers gossip in a language
we don’t fully understand.
They gather the flesh under our arms,
tuck our silk tabbies into their laps,
and call us bigboned
American girls. A white streak,
some rabbit, darts over the garden and we jump
from our mothers into the feathered grass.
Our fathers leave the folding table,
bend over the earth, and trap the poor thing
with an oily peanut sack. Play after dinner,
they tell us. We eat like sisters
trading morsels plate to plate
our laughter, like milk pails, clanging
as our parents swap stories
until their dregs of tea have dried.
When I think of you, I think of that night:
the sandal-shaped yard,
chive and ginseng on the grill,
and the rabbit’s red eyes
when we finally opened the bag.
You Asked Me Where We Come From
BY MELANIE ZHOU
I was born among zippered bodies
and hidden between my mother’s long sleeves
before she flung herself
into the Yangtze River. When the Communists
knocked, we pulled wheelbarrows through the field.
Revolution is not a dinner party.
My father hacked the dirt and the trees,
surrendered his sons for his cup of soup,
his spoon of rice. When he died,
I stowed his bones like watermelon seeds
under the moor. I was a trembling dog.
I was rushing yellow silt, and I
freed myself for you. My memory curls
like burning incense. Sometimes, I can’t
remember my mother’s face
or the shape
your lips should take
to say Yizhang.
Italy
BY MELANIE ZHOU
My lover visits me in Florence. Morning fades
like Massacio’s fresco from the balcony.
We loiter in a cafe by the dome. He studies
my face and says I look sensitive in the light.
14th century brick dries outside
after midday rain and the smell of bay laurel
meanders around our corner.
Earlier, we discussed how hard it is
starting as lovers. The waiter asks for our second
order in Italian. Avete già deciso? He’ll choose.
During the War, they entombed
David to protect him from bombing.
We walk toward the bridge,
following some American voice in the crowd.
